CDT team win Cyber 9/12 competition.


In February 2018, a team from the CDT took part in the first Cyber 9/12 competition based in the UK, competing over three rounds and eventually winning the competition.
The multi-disciplinary team, with backgrounds in small-medium business and IT management, cryptography, Philosophy, Politics, Economics (PPE) and Psychology was made up of Amy Ertan, Angela Heeler, Georgia Crossland and Lydia Garms. 


For the first round, several weeks before the event, the team were provided with an intelligence pack consisting of a collection of sources on a potential threat to the UK, involving a vulnerability to UK airports, manipulation of aviation financial markets, a new internet of things botnet, and a social media botnet. The team were tasked with preparing a 500-word brief summarising the scenario and a decision document to outline three potential policies in responses to this situation including a preferred option.

On the first day, the team gave a ten-minute presentation on their policies, followed by a short Q&A with the judges. Their performance in this round saw them through to the semi-finals where they were provided with another intelligence pack, in which the situation had escalated, and cyber-attacks had caused disruption to several UK airports and the UK banking system. Working through the night, the team produced another decision document detailing a new set of policies. Their finished document was presented the following morning, where it was later announced that they were one of four teams to make it to the final round. In this session, we heard how the situation had escalated even further with a potential attack on UK airspace that could lead to loss of life, and could be attributed to the fictional country of Mordonia. With just 20 minutes to read a new intelligence pack, decide on three new policies, and prepare for the presentation, (all whilst in isolation with no access to laptops or other devices,) the team were eventually delighted to discover that they had won the competition, concluding an amazing end to a high pressured but enjoyable two days.

The competition highlighted the effectiveness of multi-disciplinary approaches to cyber security. Within our team, each member effectively handled an area in which they had direct experience, but as individuals, each felt they had been challenged through the competition whilst learning from other disciplines.

 


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