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Co-operative Education

Rahma Ismail (software engineering)

Software engineering co-op student Rahma Ismail (she/her) took on a major project during her work term as a security analyst with the Government of British Columbia, bringing her technical, research, communication and collaboration skills together to tackle the modernization of the province-wide BCeID.

A UVic Changemaker Award recipient

Rahma is one of the recipients of the 2026 UVic Changemaker Awards, which celebrate co-op students who have made significant contributions to their workplace, community and/or to their own personal learning.

Rahma was awarded the International award, which recognizes international students who have made a meaningful contribution to the outcomes and goals of the organization or to their own personal or professional development while on a co-op work term.

Improving security processes

Rahma helped identify and tackle gaps from over 20 years of legacy systems and data by improving how users are authenticated. She also implemented a risk-based- authentication rule that detects and mitigates brute-force attacks and adds a dynamic layer of security based on user behavior and risk signals. 

"A key project involved designing and implementing a Risk-Based Authentication (RBA) rule in Go to detect and mitigate brute-force attacks, improving system security and resilience. I also built secure REST APIs in Go and validated authentication flows using Bruno, integrated Redis and PostgreSQL for session management and caching, and supported deployment with Docker on AWS ECS/Fargate using Terraform.

Beyond development, Rahma analyzed system logs and security events sourced from Apache Hadoop using Splunk (SPL), Grafana, SQL, and Python, building dashboards to detect anomalies and trends across both domestic and international BCeID usage.

“I also conducted a Security Threat & Risk Assessment using Nmap, OWASP ZAP, Wireshark, and Sysinternals, and delivered Security Ambassador presentations to promote security awareness across government.”

Building a new roadmap

Rahma also led over 200 stakeholder consultations across government teams, translating complex technical and security requirements into actionable solutions. 

“I built strong cross-ministry relationships and gained a deep understanding of how digital identity systems are used, such as user login patterns. I translated these findings into clear recommendations that informed a modernization roadmap for years to come." 

This included consolidating over 20 years of fragmented legacy identity-related information into a structured dataset to support long-term modernization efforts. Rahma presented this discovery work to executive leadership and large cross-ministry audiences and her work was used to translate complex security and identity challenges into actionable insights for decision-making.

Developing professionally

Rahma also took her work term with the provincial government as an opportunity to expand her education, completing more than 15 technical and soft skills workshops, conferences and training courses, and earning the ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity certification.

She was nominated for the Fall 2025 Student Employee Award for Excellence in Professional Development.

“I also served on the Co-op Student Advisory Board, where I helped improve co-op programs across ministries through outreach, events and strategic input.”

The impact of co-op

Looking forward, Rahma is committed to building secure, user-centered systems and contribution to ongoing innovation.

“This co-op experience gave me incredible opportunities to showcase and apply my technical skills and to connect with mentors and colleagues who are passionate about bridging security, collaboration and continuous learning,” she says.

Learn more