A League of Our Own: The Future of Cyber Defense Competitions

Numerous cyber defense competitions exist today for individuals and teams to test their cyber security skills where each team has to “win or go home.” What is missing from these competitions is a league allowing head to head competitions over the course of a season, much like a sport. Teams playing several hours every week during a ten-week season have the opportunity to improve their cyber security skills. This paper provides an overview of cyber security competitions, and how a National Cyber League can greatly expand the number of and participants in these competitions at a much lower cost leveraging virtual technologies

CyberPatriot: Exploring University-High School Partnerships

Since its inception in 2008, the CyberPatriot competition has been held annually with the goal of increasing the number of technologically skilled individuals working in the field of cybersecurity. The competition is designed to address the shortage of U.S. citizens with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines by encouraging talented high school students to pursue post-secondary study leading to careers in cybersecurity. This paper describes how one university successfully partnered with a large metropolitan high school district to better reach out to talented students in both traditional and underrepresented groups

Holistic Cyber Education

This paper provides a multi-level, multidisciplinary approach for holistically integrating cyber into a student’s academic experience. Our approach suggests formally integrating cyber throughout an institution’s curriculum, including within the required general education program, in electives from a variety of disciplines, as multi-course threads, as minors, and in numerous cyber-related majors. Our holistic approach complements in-class curricula with both a pervasive cyber-aware environment and experiential, outside-the-classroom activities that apply concepts and skills in real-world environments. The goal of our approach is to provide all educated individuals a level of cyber education appropriate for their role in society. Throughout the description of our approach, we include examples of its implementation at the United States Military Academy.https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/books/1024/thumbnail.jp

Addressing Emerging Information Security Personnel Needs. A Look at Competitions in Academia: Do Cyber Defense Competitions Work?

This paper is part of a proposed study that looks at the emerging information security personnel needs of organizations. We are attempting to explore the correlation between components of a regional cyber defense competition and an organization’s needs in terms of employing adequately trained information security personnel. We look to identify some unique characteristics of a regional academic cyber defense competition via the critical success factors method

Learning Outcomes for Cyber Defense Competitions

Cyber defense competitions (CDCs) simulate a real-world environment, where the competitors must protect the information assets of a fictional organization. These competitions are becoming popular at the high school and college levels, as well as in industry and governmental settings. However, there is little research to date on the learning outcomes associated with CDCs or the long-term benefits to the participants as they pursue future educational, employment or military goals. For this exploratory research project, we surveyed 11 judges and mentors participating in a well-established high school CDC held in the southeastern United States. Then we developed a set of recommended learning outcomes for CDCs, based on importance of the topic and participant preparedness for future information-security related endeavors. While most previous research has focused on technology issues, we analyzed technological, human, and social topics, to develop a comprehensive set of recommendations for future CDCs