The Inter-Ace national cyber challenge takes 100 of the sharpest students in cyber from the UK Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research and gathers them at the University of Cambridge to fight in a hacking contest over one day.
With over two-thirds of companies revealing difficulties attracting the skills required to ensure their IT systems are safe from attack, such events can be crucial in identifying the best talent in your industry.
While the event itself was hosted at Cambridge’s William Gates computer science lab, all of the action took place within the CyberNEXS platform of event sponsor Leidos. This is a virtual environment where a number of ‘cyber war games’ can be conducted.
For Inter-ACE, the game revolved around a fictional power company that had experienced a number of cyber-attacks that threatened not only the company’s nuclear facilities, but also therefore critical pieces of national infrastructure.
The teams were tasked with regaining access to the networks and then securing them from further incursions, while maintaining the accessibility of network services. Points were scored for a wide range of things, with the leaderboard updated constantly throughout the afternoon. At stake was the £6,500 first prize.
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