In our increasingly digitalized world, a career in IT is particularly in demand. The abbreviation "IT" refers to the term "information technology". It refers to the technology (hardware and software infrastructure) used for electronic data processing.
IT professions are also very important for nexnet. For over 20 years, nexnet has been a reliable and successful provider of solutions ranging from accounts receivable management to subscription billing. This means that we process very large volumes of data every day. Many of our well-known customers, such as congstar, freenet and Prosiebensat1, entrust us with their complex processes and highly sensitive data. This entails a great deal of responsibility, with data protection and data security requirements that are put to the test day after day.
For this reason, our IT department is very important. And we are always delighted when we are able to train new employees in the popular IT professions. To find out more about this interesting career field, we asked the IT department:
Interview with Sebastian Nicol
(former IT trainee, now responsible for Network, Data Security, SAP, among other things)
When were you a trainee at nexnet?
"I was the first IT service trainee (2003-2006) in a series of many others who successfully completed their training and were then able to take up permanent employment at nexnet."
What did you particularly like about the apprenticeship?
"Even during my apprenticeship, I noticed that you learn less at vocational school and more in day-to-day business, which is what makes your job so valuable in your later professional life. Working in our team provides such an incredibly broad platform of possible areas of expertise that hardly any other employer can offer."
Can you explain the tasks of IT in more detail?
"From workstation support, data centre operation, database administration, server virtualization, data center and office locations networked throughout Germany, application maintenance and monitoring to evaluating and defending/maintaining our information security. To this end, we have formed so-called expert clusters, which each member of the team can manage as required. This provides a constant opportunity to familiarize yourself with new areas and broaden your horizons according to your personal preferences."
How many servers does nexnet IT look after?
"We currently manage over 400 servers spread across two data centers with data volumes in the petabyte range."
What technologies do the nexnet teams work with?
"We work with a variety of different systems in the Windows, Linux and Solaris environment, have been operating infrastructure virtualization for many years and always strive to research and establish new technologies if they have the potential to make our work easier or more efficient. To this end, we have an appropriately large budget at our disposal every year."
How does nexnet ensure cyber security?
The requirements for the security of our workplaces, systems and data are becoming ever more demanding. Cyber security has never been as important as it is today and will continue to grow in importance in the future. We need to keep an eye on the associated dangers and risks on an almost daily basis and design mechanisms to detect and, ideally, ward them off. We also have a large fleet of security appliances at our disposal for this purpose (next generation firewalls, vulnerability management, monitoring with over 12,000 sensors, central endpoint security management for over 300 workstations, email security solution with up to 45,000 emails processed daily, AI-powered malware sandbox, load balancer and much more) and we regularly train all nexnet employees. At nexnet, we attach great importance to data security and cyber security. It is therefore extremely important that employees are regularly made aware of these issues.
System administrator at nexnet
Another important job in IT is that of system administrator. Many people only recognize the work of system administrators when, for example, a problem occurs with their computer. Every day, system administrators ensure that such problems do not occur in the first place and that everyone in the office can get on with their work undisturbed.
We asked Dirk Borkowski (Head of IT Services) about the profession of system administrator:
What does a system administrator do?
The field of work of system administrators is very extensive. Their subject areas include servers, storage, virtualization, operating systems, user and access management, managing licenses, applications and databases, networks, SAP system landscapes, data centers, IT security, data backup and, of course, office IT management. This applies to the areas of design, implementation, operation and security, and these were only the high-level terms of their fields of activity. In other words, without system administrators, the digital processes in a company would not work.
Does a career in IT sound exciting?
