Jeanier Anderson is a Full Sail grad with safety on her mind. Growing up, she wanted to become a police officer, and she earned a Criminology degree from Barry University in 2016. She had a hard time finding a job in her field after graduation, so she decided to look for technology programs to build off the computer classes she took as part of her undergraduate coursework.

Jeanier found Full Sail's Information Technology bachelor's degree program (then called Cloud Technologies), and now she's helping companies keep their data safe as a Cloud Security Consultant with ScaleSec.

Jeanier wasn't sure what career path she wanted to take until she took the security classes that were part of her Full Sail program.

"My two security teachers, who were Jack Norman and Ean Myers… their classes stood out to me the most, especially Ean's class. We did a capture-the-flag type of work where we had to go digging through different servers for key answers to get to the next level," she says. The hands-on exercise piqued her interest in security, and as graduation neared, she started looking for cloud security jobs.

Full Sail's industry-focused learning helped Jeanier make a seamless transition into her first job in Deloitte Consulting's Cloud Cyber Risk Management department. "They gave us tools that were actually being used in the industry. It's not like other universities where you learn something and by the time you graduate it's already obsolete," she says. "It was like I was just transitioning from one door to another because that's exactly what I was using in the company I started with."

Within a year and a half, Jeanier moved up to her current job as a Cloud Security Consultant for ScaleSec. She spends her days helping clients understand the cloud, and she helps them remediate any existing or future security issues with their cloud environment.

"Every day we get with clients and see what kind of needs they have and see what we can accomplish. That may be looking at their environments. It might be coming up with some new code for them, testing, analyzing their security setup in the cloud," she says. A recent project involved reducing the number of permissions in a client's cloud environment to ensure least privilege and not giving out sensitive data to a potential attacker during a reconnaissance phase of an attack.

One of the biggest challenges her clients face is making sure that they're following their industry's standards and securely navigating data in the cloud.

"The main concern is not so much how to do it but how securely to do it," she says. "You have to be compliant and always secure your data."

Jeanier loves helping clients secure their cloud environments every day, and her job's flexibility is an added bonus. As a fully remote worker, she can produce high-quality work under almost any set of circumstances — including the coronavirus pandemic. "They set me up pretty nice and prepared us for situations like this. To continue to give my clients that, I'd say it's an asset to everyone."

Jeanier advises current and future Full Sail students to take advantage of the school's commitment to networking.

"Networking is one of the best things that I learned at Full Sail," she says. "[The] Career Development [department] works closely with a lot of big corporations, so that was my connection into getting into Deloitte. The networking that I learned at Full Sail got me into the security department, which led me to the position I am now. So you have to speak up, and always build your brand with continual learning."