This weekend, the next generation of cybersecurity experts will compete in the Grand Final of the Cyber Security Challenge UK.
Ahead of Saturday’s final, we interviewed Roy Matthews, cyber defence lead at Cassidian, and Jonathon Bathurst, cyber lead for UK Public Services at HP — who have both supported the challenge for the last three years.
Bathurst told us the cybersecurity industry is “screaming for people,” and Matthews explained Cassidian’s involvement:
The main motivation for us is to encourage the development of skills in the competitors — to give them an awareness of the career opportunities that are available in cybersecurity and to help develop a workforce that’s going to serve the UK well against the emergence of the cybersecurity threat in the future.
As more people have signed up for the challenge, Matthews said, the scope of the events has expanded.
The number of competitors for all of the face-to-face challenges leading up to the final has increased year on year, and in fact we’ve had to grow our competition to support the increasing pool that we’ve identified. So we’ve gone from 30 competitors last year to 40 in the final. It’s definitely becoming more popular, and there’s a greater awareness now this year than there has been in the previous two years.
This year’s Grand Final will take the form of two distinct challenges set against the backdrop of a Formula 1 race weekend. In the technical component, competitors play the role of analysts working on an incident response team for a fictitious SME that produces on-board diagnostic equipment for F1 teams. In a cyberrange platform designed by Cassidian, analysts will have to figure out whether there has been a network intrusion, as one of the teams suspects.
The second part will be run by HP and will involve risk and policy management in a real-world setting. As all-rounders, competitors will have to evaluate the strengths of certain security platforms and suppliers within tight budget constraints and while dealing with data protection issues.
Bathurst said the challenge sponsors want to see how competitors will work as members of a team.
In security, no one company has the answer. Big corporations will be buying their security from a myriad of suppliers, but they need those suppliers to work together. That is exactly the same with this challenge. We want to see how the teams will work together.
Prizes worth more than GB pound 100,000 are available. The winner can expect a full international internship with Cassidian or HP, which can take whatever form they choose — full time or part time.
The winner of this year’s challenge will be announced Monday.
interesting info, Rob, thank you… I hope one day we would have something similar in Canada… as Cyber threat do grow… and I expect to see more security breaches in 2013…
Yes, the Cyber Challenge UK is particularly interesting as they target people who don’t work in IT security at all, but might have the skills to tackle a security breach without knowing it. Interesting idea, and really useful for building the profile of online security as a career option.
@ Rob that is really cool that they are doing this with people who don’t work in IT. It seems like a fun time even if you don’t end up having what it takes.