The UK has a new Cyber Security Champion following the Cyber Security Challenge UK Awards in London tonight. Peter Clarke, from Leicester, a 38 year old network engineer for high-end car dealer, beat thousands of entrants and 41 fellow finalists in order to claim the top spot in the UK’s premier cyber skills competition. The two-day Masterclass final was developed by a team from QinetiQ and supported by experts from Bank of England, GCHQ, National Crime Agency, BT, Cisco, Falanx Group, Roke Manor Research, Simudyne, and CyberCENTS Solutions.
Having received his award Clarke said: “I feel like it’s been a rollercoaster ride. I only entered the Cyber Challenge 8 or 9 weeks ago without anything higher than a GCSE and a few Microsoft qualifications in my back pocket so to be here now is unbelievable. I’ve had an interest in cyber for several years now and keep a breadth of the current trends and tools in the industry but this is the first step towards a future career in the area. I really want this to become my profession and the Cyber Security Challenge has given me a catapult into the industry that you can’t find anywhere else.”
Peter now receives his choice of rewards from a collection of career-enhancing prizes worth over £100,000 including valuable industry training, university courses, and access to strategic industry events – all provided by Challenge sponsors including SANS Institute, Royal Holloway University, (ISC)2, CompTIA, Bsides London, IISP, IAAC, 7Safe, InfosecSkills and CREST.
Bob Nowill, Chairman, Cyber Security Challenge UK said: “We would like to encourage any individual with an inquisitive mind, a passion for problem solving and desire to learn, to sign up and have a go at some of the games on our play-on-demand gaming platform – they are ready to play now. You could have a hidden talent for cyber and be joining us for our big finale next year. Our past winners have included postmen, car park attendants, web designers and gamers – we simply don’t know who could be next.”
More than fifty percent of this year’s finalists are gamers, suggesting what the Challenge has long-believed: that the 33 million gamers in the UK is very likely to be a strong source of future cyber defence talent to keep our country safe online.
The Challenge works with some of the top organisations in the cyber security industry to design and implement its programme of competitions. This helps to add realism to the challenges, as well as ensuring that all of the skills tested and taught are those that companies are looking to find and recruit. Around half of last year’s finalists are already in their first cyber security jobs, a trend that has been seen over the past five years.
The Masterclass Final
This year’s Masterclass kicked off on Wednesday night with an informal reception at QinetiQ’s headquarters in Farnborough where candidates were briefed by a fictitious commander from the National Crime Agency. Hearing about a tip-off, linked to a high-profile pharmaceutical company, the team were asked to work with a national task force to intercept information and locate a potential security threat. The first day of the Challenge highlighted a conference at Church House as the targeted location and the task force moved into the City to defend the site.
Day two saw candidates battle against the clock to find the insider threats within the fictitious pharma company and infiltrate the environmental control system in order to prevent the suspected biological threat from materialising. The competition’s developers placed realistic vulnerabilities for candidates to find and ethical guidelines were instigated to ensure candidates followed real world legal and ethical procedures when they needed to exploit networks; all in all, providing them with a sophisticated, real-life experience of working in the cyber security industry.
Like what you see? Play now
After all the excitement of this year’s Masterclass final, the Challenge is ready to do it all over again. Registration is already open for next year’s programme and a host of competitions are available to play now. Using our new play-on-demand system which allows access to games any time, you could sign up and take part in just a matter of clicks. Why not be part of one of the UK’s fastest growing and most exciting sector?
