India | Mohit Kumar

Meet Mohit

As far as he could remember, Mohit always wanted to pursue post-graduate education abroad. Originally from Haryana, India, Mohit was interested in institutions with established curriculum, state-of-the-art facilities, and a reputable international rank. After meeting UTS staff at an international education fair, he learned about studying at UTS and living in Sydney. As Australia’s financial capital, Sydney has plentiful job opportunities and high-quality of life. Driven by his interest in computers and cutting-edge technology, Mohit was attracted to a post-graduate degree in Cybersecurity.

“I looked over the curriculum being offered by UTS during the education fair and I found that subjects like Cloud Security (was only being taught by few institutions at that time), Software Defined Networking, Digital Forensics (one of my favourite disciplines), IoT and Mobile Security (really new in market) were offered by UTS. The high-quality and up-to-date curriculum were one of the strongest reasons I decided to enrol at UTS.”

He applied to study a Master of Information Technology in Cyber Security at UTS. Upon his admission, Mohit was awarded the Engineering and IT Postgraduate Academic Excellence Scholarship—a postgraduate scholarship specifically for high achieving international students. In 2022, he made the Dean’s List.

The UTS Admission team recognised my outstanding academic performance from my Bachelors of Science (Honours) degree in Forensics Science from Amity University. I received a 25% scholarship in the form of discount on my total fee and it was truly a big help to me and my family.

During his time at UTS, Mohit had many professional development opportunities to prepare him for his future career in cybersecurity. Mohit joined the UTS Cybersecurity Society where he participated in events like Hackathons and Capture the Flag (CTF). These simulations allowed him to practice techniques learned from class and also develop practical skills that were not covered in the curriculum. 

“Participating in Hackathons and Capture the Flags was one of the best extracurricular activities I have done ever. These activities have helped me a lot in my career. For an international student the job market is highly competitive. Even if it’s a graduate job in Cybersecurity the employer still expects a fresh graduate to possess some industry grade technical skills or some prior experience. In an interview for my first job with ThreatDefence, the interviewer asked me for some skills like Active Directory, PowerShell remoting, Security monitoring, using Nmap, Burp Suite, beginner level Pen Testing skills etc. Fortunately, I honed some of these skills through, hackathons, CTFs and learning on my own.”

Mohit credits UTS curriculum and electives with preparing him well for his career as a cybersecurity professional. 

“UTS helped me to develop not only technical skills related to cybersecurity but it has also helped me to grow in other areas like management and leadership. The variety of electives and subjects offered flexibility to me as a student to navigate towards my career goals. I wanted to grow as a Cybersecurity professional and develop a range of technical skills, so I opted for the most technical electives and ended up creating a strong skill set. Soon after finishing the final semester exams from UTS, I decided to go for the extra mile and opted for CompTIA Security+ certification exam. The electives studied at UTS strengthened my Cyber Security concepts so much that with persevere hard work and consistency I cracked the exam in the first attempt and it was a great achievement for me. I got the interview from ThreatDefence and the Director was impressed by the skillset I had as a fresh graduate. This is how I landed my first full-time graduate job as a security professional.”

After working with ThreatDefence, Mohit sought a role with more digital forensics related work. Shortly thereafter, he was offered his dream job as a Consultant for Cyber Incident Response at KPMG Australia. His responsibilities include tackling cyber incidents for clients, malware analysis, conducting digital forensics investigations, dark web monitoring,  cyber threat hunting, and performing cyber threat intelligence.