Sunshine Balingit is passionate about helping people. That passion initially led her to pursue nursing, but along life’s twists and turns, she ultimately found fulfillment in computer science, specifically cybersecurity. The Laboratory provided the perfect place to blend her appreciation and interest in the sciences with her desire to help protect the work of others making breakthroughs in these fields.  “I want to ensure that the data we use and generate for LLNL research is secure. I see myself as kind of a pirate, where I’m fighting this war to protect LLNL’s people and proprietary information.”

Sunshine started in Livermore Computing (LC) as an HPC Cluster Academy intern in the summer of 2020, gaining hands-on experience with the Laboratory’s computing systems and a deeper understanding of HPC principles, architectures, and operations. “Before the academy, my experience with systems was focused on desktops, but this program opened my eyes to the vast amount of information and data that a whole HPC system could account for, and it really piqued my interest in working at the Laboratory.” Later that fall, she participated in a cybersecurity-focused internship, in which she helped make Python modules safer for people at the Laboratory to install on their environments. The following year, upon completion of her Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science from California State University East Bay, she joined the Laboratory as a full-time employee.

Consolidation and Compliance

Early in her LLNL career, Sunshine led a project to improve LC’s log analysis and monitoring capabilities. She says, “I started working with Logstash, which is an application that takes ingested individual computer logs and parses them in a way that they can be easily read and analyzed.” She proposed an idea to make the process more efficient, which included efforts to consolidate LC’s logging infrastructure and migrate log data from Splunk to Elastic Stack. Although the initial migration was completed in January 2024, Sunshine is always looking to further improve LC’s capabilities for the greater good. “I want to do threat hunting, malware analysis, and digital forensics, which will require processing millions of logs correctly, so we need to continue to build a way for us to easily look at all the data.”

Now, as one of LC’s Information System Security Officer (ISSO) and Cybersecurity System Administrator, Sunshine manages security plans, completes assessments and reauthorizations, and validates LC systems are compliant with existing policies. “As an ISSO, I have to understand how LC works as a whole to ensure that the services we manage and any ideas we implement can be executed in a safe way,” she says. To further improve LC’s cybersecurity posture, she leads an ongoing project to automate the process of verifying LC’s systems are correctly implementing the TOSS (Tri-Lab Operating System) STIG (Stack Security Technical Implementation Guide). This work includes accounting for any adjustments required for HPC systems, as policies are typically written with much smaller systems, such as laptops, in mind.

Sunshine finds her work both challenging and rewarding. “My role is forever evolving and there are so many things to learn,” she says. “I like deep diving into new information, pulling it apart, and then putting it back together to make it better than when we started. Having a better understanding of LC, I am thinking of ways we can collaborate and improve management of our workloads. I want to know what we could do better, what people are looking for to help them in their work, and how we might make that happen.”

Endless Possibilities

Sunshine’s work continues to be driven by her desire to help people. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with such a diverse group of people at the Laboratory, and working here has also provided me opportunities to engage with people externally.” As an example, Sunshine has expanded her skill set through initiatives like SCinet—a volunteer group that comes together annually to build the HPC systems infrastructure for the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC). She says, “Participating in activities like SCinet allows me to share what I know to help others, learn about what people are doing elsewhere, and apply insights to see what we can improve." Sunshine also helps to mentor the next generation of cybersecurity experts. “I participate in recruitment activities for Cal State East Bay, where I help students with their resumes or talk with them about the Laboratory.”

Sunshine’s career looks bright at LLNL—a place where she feels she has endless possibilities for growth and opportunities to support the people and research efforts being conducted at a world-class scientific institution. Although her path to get here was not straightforward, Sunshine uses it as a teaching moment. “I like to share the story of the change from nursing to HPC because it shows folks who are transitioning careers that it’s still something that you can do at any point along your journey.”

—Caryn Meissner