Fall 2026 IT Intern ( Incident Responder)
What you'd do
The Administrative Office (AO), an agency of the judicial branch of the federal government, is committed to serving and supporting the federal court system of the United States. The AO provides a broad range of legislative, legal, financial, technology, management, administrative and program support services to the federal courts.
Major duties
OPPORTUNITY: The AO is seeking applicants for its Student Internship Program. The opportunity is intended to provide valuable work experience and prepare students interested in a public service career. The AO is looking for student interns with backgrounds and/or demonstrated interest in the following areas: human resources, public affairs, law, business administration (marketing, budget, accounting, etc.), and information technology. The student intern will have an opportunity to improve his or her writing, research, analytical, logical, multi-tasking, and customer service skills. Additionally, student interns are provided with several networking opportunities with fellow interns, agency employees, and other government employers. All AO internships are onsite at the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building in Washington, DC. Telework is not permitted. This specific internship will be in the Department of the Chief Information Office (DCIO), Information Technology Security Office (ITSO). Duties include, but are not limited to: Conducting thorough analysis of network, endpoint, and application logs to identify and assess intrusions, determine their scope and impact, and implement appropriate containment strategies to mitigate threats. Reviewing real-time dashboards, studies technical and user-behavioral anomalies, and correlates events from multiple sources to help identify early signs of compromise such as unusual login patterns, abnormal network traffic, unauthorized file changes, privilege misuse, or suspicious process execution. Providing timely and accurate incident status updates to key stakeholders, including the incident commander, SOC leaders, and executives. Maintaining and enhances the organization's incident response framework by defining and refining the incident declaration processes, updating the Judiciary's Incident Response Plan, and identifying gaps in existing procedures, awareness training, or playbooks to improve compliance and reduce risk. Developing and tests enterprise-wide detection and response capabilities, including endpoint artifact retrieval, isolation techniques, and Yara rule creation, to improve threat detection and containment at scale. Driving continuous improvement through the development and validation of readiness exercises, standard operating procedures, and playbooks, while pioneering innovative incident response techniques for PaaS and SaaS cloud environments and leveraging automation to streamline response efforts. Communicating analysis of incidents, response actions, detection gaps, policy violations, and improvement measures, to update response strategies based on evolving understanding of threats and post-incident reviews.
What you need to qualify
All students in the Volunteer Student Internship Program must be enrolled or accepted for enrollment as a degree-seeking student, taking at least a half-time academic or technical course load in an accredited 2 year or 4 year program, or in a post-secondary level program. Students must also be in good academic standing, maintaining a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Additional Qualification Requirements: In addition to meeting the BASIC QUALIFICATIONS REQUIREMENTS, applicants must also: Work well in a team environment. Have strong organization and communication skills and be detailed oriented. Have a working knowledge of computer applications such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or WordPerfect. Have excellent writing, reading, and interpersonal skills. Be able to organize a variety of assignments simultaneously and meet tight deadlines. The ideal candidate is an undergraduate or graduate student in Cybersecurity. The Student Internship Program requires all participants to be an active student. Therefore, seniors graduating at the end of the current semester will not be considered unless they are continuing to pursue advanced studies as a degree-seeking student at the beginning of the next semester.
Before you apply
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