Team C3S from Naval War College won first place at the fifth annual Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge, a cybersecurity student competition by the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative. The competition was held on March 17-18 at American University’s Washington College of Law in Washington, DC, and featured forty-five competing teams from eighteen states across the United States. Student teams competed to offer their best national-security policy prescriptions for combating evolving cyber conflict scenarios.

Team JOLTT of the University of Texas, Austin, took second place; third place was awarded to Columbia University’s Team [sudomakemeasandwich~]$; and fourth place went to Team USAF Academy of Air Force Academy.

The competition was made possible through the generous support of Facebook, MITRE, Neustar, Leidos, the CyberWire, and the Military Cyber Professionals Association. The venue for the competition was provided by American University’s Washington College of Law. Additionally, Baker & McKenzie LLP generously hosted an evening reception and awards ceremony in their offices overlooking the White House and the National Mall, providing the participants a unique opportunity to engage with the judges and observers in the heart of Washington. The event featured high-level cyber professionals, including BG Jennifer Buckner, Deputy Commander of Operations at the US Cyber Command; Kate Charlet, US Department of Defense’s principal director for cyber policy; Crowdstrike CTO Dmitri Alperovitch; R. David Edelman, former special assistant to the President for Economic and Technology Policy; Jeannette Manfra, Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications at the US Department of Homeland Security; and many others.

The Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge remains the only major student competition devoted to national security policy recommendations for responses during a major cyber incident. It engages students with a group of senior-level cybersecurity practitioners acting as judges, representing various sectors including government, finance, telecom, and the press.

In addition to the event in Washington, DC, the competition will also take place in Geneva, Switzerland on April 20-21, 2017, and in Sydney, Australia in September 2017. Visit http://atlanticcouncil.org/cyber912 for more information on the upcoming competitions.

Contact press@atlanticcouncil.org with any inquiries.