Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge - 20-21 April 2017. Geneva, Switzerland


The Cyber 9/12 Challenge is a scenario-driven policy competition for teams of students, organised by the Atlantic Council and hosted at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Royal Holloway was represented by Team CDT Mavericks, comprising Ela Berners-Lee, Andreas Haggman, Rory Hopcraft and Pip Thornton. A week before the event we received a briefing pack containing intelligence reports and news stories about an unfolding threat of ransomware against medical devices. We were required to digest this information into a short, written summary and construct a Decision Document containing four proposed policy options to tackle the situation.

On the first day of the competition we were put before a panel of six judges to present our policy alternatives, including our recommended option. The judges were given two minutes to read our Decision Document after which we had ten minutes to give an oral presentation, followed by ten minutes of rigorous questions and answers from the judges.

We were delighted to win the award for the Most Creative Policy Response, thanks perhaps to our policy to insert human intelligence agents into the attackers’ organisations, or our advocacy of a Robin Hood model for security updates. As a result, we qualified for the semi-final round the following day. This involved receiving another briefing pack moving the scenario forward, which needed to be analysed overnight. The team stayed up until 03:30 working out brand new policy options, which we had to be ready to present by 08:00.

Although our presentation went well, with the judges praising “the best teamwork seen in the whole competition”, we did not make the final four. Despite this, we were extremely pleased with our efforts and results. None of us had any experience of such an event but all found it hugely rewarding, both in terms of the skills we developed and the exposure it gave us to a high-pressure policymaking environment. As a testament to the CDT- ethos, we felt the breadth of backgrounds and knowledge of our team members served us very well as everyone was able to contribute in a different way.

We wholeheartedly recommend this competition to other students. Although we may have set the bar high with an award-winning Royal Holloway debut, our performance is not unbeatable. Watch out for announcements about a UK-version later this year. And most importantly, we did better than all three Oxford CDT teams! Beers well-earned.

 


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