Thomas Dinh Secures Career as an IT Audit & Financial Advisory Consultant 

Thomas Dinh, BIT major and PPE minor, shares his experience securing a career with Protiviti as an IT Audit and Financial Advisory Consultant.

Thomas, can you tell us about your academic history as a student at Virginia Tech? 

I was a Business Information Technology major with a concentration in Cybersecurity Management Analytics. I minored in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. 

Can you tell us a little about your position with Protiviti?

I am starting at Protiviti as an IT Audit & Financial Advisory Consultant. I also interned with the company last summer and had a fantastic experience. 

Can you tell us about the application and acceptance process for your current position, and what kind of work you will focus on?

When I interviewed back in 2022, I had to leverage the coursework at Virginia Tech. Being a BIT major and PPE minor, it allowed me to showcase the diversity of knowledge I had gained. 

Under this position, I perform testing of IT General Controls (ITGC) for a variety of clients to help them with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act compliance. The key areas of testing include change management, segregation of duties, risk assessment, user access provisioning, and user security settings. In short, the work that I do helps a company be compliant with financial reporting. 

How did PPE help set you up for success?

PPE helped to set me up for success by encouraging me to take a step back and see multiple perspectives to a problem. Being in a people-oriented business, it is important to understand what problems people are facing and delivering to them the best possible solution.

PPE has also given me the opportunity to blend the technical skills I learned in BIT classes with the “soft” skills I learned in PPE. I believe that such a combination of skills is key to success in today’s business world.