9:00 – Arrival at the office
Today I am working from the office, which we now do two days a week. I start my day by checking my e-mails and open tickets. On a day-to day basis I usually get things like questions from colleagues, phishing mail reports, abuse reports from third parties, or requests for information about issues we notified via the Belnet Threat Intelligence service.
10:00 – Vulnerability management meeting
My team holds a regular meeting with our ICT department to go over the latest vulnerabilities discovered by our scanning solution. We go over the report together (that I compiled the day before) to determine which vulnerabilities need to be prioritized and who the best person to assign it to is. This is also a great opportunity to discuss any improvements we can make. If we notice certain recurring types of vulnerabilities, we can explore ways to proactively eliminate them such as changes to patch management.
11:00 – Coffee break and reading
After the meeting, I take an opportunity to go stretch my legs and get some coffee. I also read up on cybersecurity news and reports we get from sources such as CERT.be’s EWS, noting which ones to read later.
11:30 – Ongoing projects: NetFlow
I now have some time to tackle the ongoing projects in my queue. We are currently testing new solutions for our network flow monitoring, and our Managed Services cell has informed me that they implemented new features. I hop on to the platform to ensure that it can fulfill our business cases and check the performance. I write a short report of my findings and comments but, so far, it’s looking promising.
13:00 – Lunch
I usually bring leftovers from home and eat in our cafeteria, but today I decide to go out for lunch. Our office is just a couple of tram stops from the pedestrian area of Brussels’ center with plenty of options.
14:00 – Security Team meeting
This weekly meeting is the chance to get updates from what everyone on the team is doing. Our team leader will usually start by relaying any requests that were made from other teams so we decide who will follow up on them. We then each give a status update on the projects we’ve been working on, and any noteworthy incidents we might have handled over the past week.
15:00 – Ongoing projects: Incident Handling Procedures
I finish my day working on the biggest project currently on my plate. I’m currently working on compiling all our technical procedures that relate to incident response and formalizing them as Standard Operating Procedures. This is still in the early stages, so I write a few while following a strict template. I’m also working on a presentation to explain the process to our other teams, since we will need their input for the project. Since I don’t have any meetings tomorrow, this will be my focus.
16:30 – Heading home
I clear my desk and prepare to head home. My day was a little under our normal 8 hours today, but we have flexible hours and I prefer working longer days from home since I don’t have to commute.
Davina Luyten is communications officer at Belnet. She has a background in translation, journalism and multilingual corporate communication. At Belnet, she focuses on external communication, public relations, crisis communication and security awareness. She has participated in the GÉANT project since 2020, where her involvement includes the annual cyber security awareness campaign.