Cyber Centurion National Final

On Friday 17th April I accompanied a group of my students to the National Museum of Computing to compete in the national final of the U.K. CyberCenturion Competition. This is one of the range of challenges run by Cyber Security Challenge UK. 

In this competition students aged compete in teams of 6. Each team are given a number of computers running different operating systems and given the task of securing them from a range of threats whilst also ensuring they can still function according to a scenario brief. Additional challenges include some forensic investigation of the existing data on the machines and associated logs. Teams competed in two rounds with the best eight teams qualifying for the final.

The final took the same format as the qualifying rounds but with the additional pressure of being filmed and interviewed during the competition by both sky news ( extended coverage available to sky subscribers via the iPad app) and BBC Click for an upcoming show. All teams got tours of both the national museum of computing and the Bletchley park museum as well as a swag bag including an exclusive t shirt, sunglasses and water bottle. 

After a busy day of competition the results were announced and prizes awarded in the colluses gallery which as well as containing one of the rebuilt colossus machines is also the world oldest purpose built computing centres having been built to hold the original colossus machines in WW2. the winning team (not mine!) were each given the unique prize of a display case containing a valve from the colossus and paper storage tape.

Entries for next years competition are now open and you can find out more details at http://cybersecuritychallenge.org.uk