Mustafa Cetin (23) is studying a bachelor's degree in foreign trade/international management at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg. A compulsory internship is required as part of his studies. From August to December 2015 he is working as an intern in the Sales & Marketing department at Stellar Data Recovery in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In the interview, he explains what he has learned in the meantime about professional life and data recovery.
What fascinates you about the topics of data security and data recovery? Your studies have little to do with that...
That's correct. Before interning at Stellar, I had very limited knowledge on this topic. In other words - no idea about data. During my internship, I discovered that this topic is omnipresent and should be taken very seriously. Many companies (but also private individuals) contact us and are interested in so-called data wiping. Just last week, a major video game manufacturer contacted us. The guys in the lab are currently busy deleting the data from several hundred hard drives. Your own data in the wrong hands? Everyone wants to avoid that!
How do you feel about data security in general? How important is the topic to you?
Data security should be important to everyone. It's just a frightening thought to know that my personal data is stored somewhere and could be used by someone for God knows what. I view data as property. Data that concerns me should only be able to be viewed by me. I recently read an article about data retention. For example, it should now be permitted to store location data from cell phones for 4 weeks. You're almost afraid to share your location with the weather app on your smartphone.
You have been in the internship for about three months. Did you have an aha moment?
To be honest, I had quite a few aha moments. I've always wanted to understand how Google works and how they can shovel so much coal. Now I know how SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEA (Search Engine Advertising) works. I learned how common storage media are structured and how they work. I also think that I am finally slowly but surely closing the huge gap between academic and practical life. I never believed it before, but the interaction of these two areas can actually be very impressive.
What surprised you the most?
I never thought that a company's visibility in Google results, for example, could be so important. But it has a very big impact on company performance, especially in the IT industry.
Also, the lab tour last month was very impressive for me. I've always been very interested in PCs and IT stuff. The lab manager presented me with some of the difficult cases and explained that every data recovery case is unique. Every data recovery presents a special challenge. Respect to the guys in the lab!
Could you tell us a trick to avoid getting into the situation where your own data needs to be saved?
The magic word is backup! Simply save everything you have twice or three times. This goes out to all students out there: save your homework and projects multiple times! Uses clouds and less vulnerable storage media such as USB sticks, SD cards and SSD hard drives.
Did you learn something during the internship that you couldn't have learned at university?
Well, people always say in principle that we students at university only get to know theories and concepts without building up any actual practical reference. Since I am a student at a university of applied sciences, I should actually have a better connection to practice. To be honest, I don't really know if that's the case. But what I can definitely say is that there are other things to learn besides the university stuff. For example, my internship in the Marketing & Sales area made me much more confident in dealing with customers and was able to make many important contacts. The internship took away my nervousness and I think I will be a little more relaxed in future professional life situations. Without the internship I would definitely have lost touch with reality.
