Defence Industry Cyber Challenge
Saab Australia is backing Australia’s first Defence Industry Cyber Challenge to attract and identify potential cyber security professionals for this emerging industry.
Over the past few decades while organisations moved their systems, information and processes online to gain priceless efficiency, they’ve explosed themselves to the threat of information and identity theft and massive disruption.
Saab Australia’s Program Manager Cyber Security, Marc Tapping says, “Because cyber-breaches can have a real, and potentially devastating impact for a business, we’ve seen the rise of a whole new cyber defence industry. The problem is, it’s not growing quick enough and we need people in addition to product. Cyber Security is something our organisation takes very seriously—we invest in protecting our own processes and systems too, not just those of our clients”
The Defence Industry Cyber Security Challenge launching in Adelaide 30 August, is the first of a national series of regular cyber security challenges hosted by AustCyber one of six Growth Centres established under the Federal Government's $230-million Cyber Security Strategy.
AustCyber developed the Cyber Security Challenge series to address Australia’s critical shortage of qualified cyber security personnel. The latest surveys estimates Australia needing at least 11,000 qualified cyber staff to meet today's security challenges alone.
With the Defence Industry Cyber Challenge, ‘challengers’ will showcase their skillsets whilst competing for win major prizes donated by Saab Australia, Boeing Defence Australia, and Nova Systems. Dtex Systems and ThreatMetrix will host and manage the Challenge which is essentially two competitions framed in fictitious defence industry organisations – each focused on a capture the flag style ‘account takeover’ and an insider threat ‘hacker response’ scenario.
The rapidly-escalating proliferation of ransomware, intellectual property theft and financial fraud saw Saab Australia invest in cyber capability services in 2015 which aims to build over the coming years.
Mark Slade, Saab Australia’s Civil Security General Manager says, “The Cyber Challenge will help attract and identify the cyber industry's best talent and new players, which is good news for us as this is an essential part of our business growth plans, including exports into the APAC region. Cyber capabilities are a key element to cyber harden our products and services in our defence and civil security systems businesses to provide our customers with safe secure solutions”.
Registrations for the challenge has been encouraging, with entries coming in from all over the nation. Entries close September 9 when the competition officially gets underway.
Winners will be announced during the Australian Cyber Security Growth Network's "Cyber Week" in Sydney on Wednesday September 27.
The Defence Industry Cyber Security Challenge’s will fun for the challengers, encouraging them to learn about cyber security and potentially provide pathways into cyber security careers.
“There are opportunities for winners to gain experience in the cyber security industry which help them establish a new career,” said Marc Tapping.