Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge: Phil Sheriff

The UK Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge is an annual competition designed to foster the next generation of cyber security professionals. Teams of four university students take on the role of senior government advisors responding to a complex and escalating cyber-attack with national and international ramifications.

Competing teams receive intelligence packs consisting of reports gathered from multiple sources. They must work together to analyse the report, developing an understanding of the technological, political and legal implications of the content. Then, they present their analysis and recommendations to a panel of judges from government and industry.

We’re delighted that CDT Student Phil Sheriff successfully coached a mixed team from different universities into third place. Kira from team Nocturnal shares with us her thoughts on the competition. 

We were a mixed team from different universities across the UK including RHUL, University of Newcastle, University of Southampton and University of Warwick and we navigated the entire experience online, conducting team meetings and writing decision documents through the night of the competition virtually.

This was the first year of the new Cyber 9/12 Virtual Track, which was a great success, and we achieved 3rd place nationally out of around 20 teams.

Teams are presented with an evolving cyber incident and must strike a fine balance between socio-economic, technical and geopolitical strategies to create briefing documents and policy briefs that they present to a panel of acting 'government advisors': experts from across the cyber security industry.

This year, in keeping with 2024 being the biggest election year in history, the hypothetical scenario was based around misinformation campaigns, state-sponsored cyber-attacks on CNI, and a cyber-attack that could undermine UK electoral integrity extremely close to the hypothetical UK general election.

Fictional intelligence packs containing email correspondence from Thames Water, BAE Systems and the NCSC as well as intercepted messages, 'fake' leaked YouTube interviews and Europol notices gave students insight into the developing situation and guided the development of strategic policy to deal with the situation holistically.

As a team, despite working virtually, we thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and learnt a huge amount and even enjoyed some fantastic virtual careers and networking sessions too.

Being from technical backgrounds in maths, computer science and cybersecurity, we all valued the chance to learn about the wider implications of technical problems and understand just how far-reaching policy must be address all aspects of a cyber incident. It was great to combine our varying individual skillsets and work alongside Phil to develop some really creative approaches to dealing with the situations that were thrown at us!

 

 

Phil Sheriff, CDT student and Nocturnal coach says


Being a coach was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, made all the more so by working with Kiran and her fantastic team. Despite coming from technical backgrounds, they quickly grasped the challenges of communicating relevant but highly technical information under considerable time pressure (and a lack of sleep). Courses of action were key, and here the team quickly figured out that there’s no right or wrong answer to complex situations, just pros and cons to different options. Getting this across to stressed out policy makers (aka the judges) not a straightforward task, but one they managed with impressive confidence.

Considering the difficulties the team faced, the role of the coach is a relatively simple one - putting answers into a UK context, helping the team understand the perspective of the policy makers, and the importance of balancing technical detail with policy relevance. Being on hand to role play policy makers and their often tangential (even random) line of questioning was probably the most useful, and enjoyable, part of the experience.

Congratulations to Kira and the team-  an impressive achievement - especially given they were all in different locations throughout - adding to the already considerable challenges of 9/12.




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