London Students Declared Most Talented in UK for IT Security

Imperial College London students have been named the country’s IT security top cats at the Inter-ACE contest, after beating rivals from 11 top universities.

Each of the 12 universities that took part had received recognition as Academic Centres of Excellence in IT security research.

The University of Cambridge hosted the contest, which saw 100 students take part and was designed to show off future IT security professionals. Participants used the Leidos’ CyberNEXS training platform in the simulation-based competition, which including penetration testing and forensics challenges. This will hopefully bode well for the future for organisations wishing to fill penetration testing jobs, or perhaps digital forensics jobs, with talented individuals.

The winning team, named QWERTY, won £6,500. Second and third place prizes were awarded to the University of Southampton’s SU-DON’T and PM_ME_FLAGS.

Luke Granger-Brown, a 22-year-old Imperial College student, said to SCMagazineUK.com:

“It has been an incredible competition, and I’m surprised we won. We would encourage everyone who can to participate in the next competition, as it’s a great way to put the stuff we have learnt at university into practice.”

The contest, which takes place every year, is supported by the NCC Group, Leidos, and the National Cyber-Security Centre (NCSC). It aims to help combat the IT security skills shortage, which latest numbers indicate will rise to 1.8m by the year 2022. Currently, over two in three firms are having difficulties in recruiting the volume of staff needed to fend off major cyber attacks.