Students attending universities from across Australia are invited to enter as mixed discipline teams of 4 under-grad or post-grad students that have not yet entered full time employment.

The competition has been designed to provide student competitors across varied disciplines a deeper understanding of the strategy challenges associated with cyber security, crisis and conflict. The diverse skill sets of its participants will be tested as they are presented with a variety of scenario injects ranging from news reports, technical reports, intelligence reports and social media feeds. As a team they must develop their joint understanding of the problem, develop options, and then present their suggested solution in an oral presentation to judging panels.

The judging panels, consisting of experienced industry, academic and cyber security experts will be able to ask questions of the teams and then score the team’s performance before giving feedback.

Semi-finalist teams will be announced at the end of the first day, after which they must quickly get up to speed with scenario developments before again presenting on the morning of day two. Teams that did not get through to the semi-final will be given a separate expert coaching session before everybody join together in the afternoon to listen to the final round.

Although the finalists will be vying to score highly and win the event and prizes, it’s about more than that. The competition generates unique value and experience for all the students irrespective of their academic discipline, be they technical, policy or strategy, and also brings current senior national and international cyber security thought-leaders together with those of the future.

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