Peter Clarke, from Leicester, a 38-year-old network engineer for a high-end car dealer, beat thousands of entrants and 41 fellow finalists to take the title of Cyber Security Challenge UK champion in the annual cyber skills competition. The two-day final was developed by a team from defence and security product company QinetiQ and supported by figures 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 roller-coaster ride. I only entered the Cyber Challenge eight or nine 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 prizes worth over £100,000 including industry training, university courses, and access to strategic industry events – all provided by sponsors including SANS Institute, Royal Holloway University, (ISC)2, CompTIA, Bsides London, IISP, IAAC, 7Safe, InfosecSkills and CREST.
Bob Nowill, Chairman of 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.”
Pictured left to right: Dr Robert Nowill, Chairman Cyber Security Challenge; Peter Clarke, winner; Matthew Gould, Director of Cyber Security and Information Assurance at the Cabinet Office.
More than half of this year’s finalists were gamers, suggesting what the Challenge has long believed: that the 33 million gamers in the UK is a likely source of future cyber defence talent.
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.
Final
This year’s final began 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 in Westminster as the targeted location.
Day two saw candidates battle against the clock to find the insider threats within the fictitious pharma company and infiltrate the environmental control system 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 real-life experience of working in cyber security.
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.
