Zero trust, top key exploited vulnerabilities part of 5th annual cyber cup challenge

Jason Miller@jmillerWFED

January 22, 2024 8:57 am

4 min read

Whether you are a chief information security officer, a cybersecurity analyst or have nothing to do with securing networks or systems in your day job, if you want to test your mettle against other federal experts, the 5th annual President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition is your opportunity.

The federal employee-only contest pits teams of federal employees and individuals from across the civilian, defense and intelligence communities against not just each other, but against the smart folks at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, which helps CISA develop the contest.

“Every year we start our challenge development cycles by looking at new vulnerabilities that have come out that year, looking at some relevant topics to the cybersecurity community. We take a look at CISA’s key exploited vulnerabilities catalog to see what we can put in there that’s testable within our infrastructure,” said Michael Harpin, the competitions section chief within the Cyber Defense Education and Training branch at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Homeland Security Department, in an interview with Federal News Network. “We have some challenges this year that are focusing on zero trust architecture as well because that’s a highly relevant topic within the community. On top of that, we’re always looking to push the limits within our competitions. We’re going to incorporate some physical industrial control systems (ICS) escape room challenges into our teams finals that we host in person at CISA’s facilities the week of April 15. We’re really looking forward to incorporating these new wrinkles and giving new vulnerabilities out to our participants.”

The “capture the flag” competition also includes some aspects of artificial intelligence and large language models. Harpin said the real test is around a lot of the fundamental skills within the workforce CISA wants to continue to assess and test.

        Join us Jan. 24 at 2 p.m. EST for a discussion with agency and industry leaders on how agencies are implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to enhance cybersecurity initiatives, sponsored by Okta and AWS. | CPE credit eligible