Postman Is Crowned UK Cyber Security Champion 2011

A Wakefield postman has emerged as the winner of the first, year-long UK Cyber Security Challenge (CSC) at the @-Bristol Science Museum yesterday.

“I’m absolutely jubilant. Over the moon,” surprised winner Dan Summers told eWEEK. “We had such a broad array of talent, I didn’t dream it would be me standing holding the trophy at the end of the day.”

The award was presented to Summers by Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones (pictured), the government’s minister for cyber security and anti-terrorism. In her presentation speech, she congratulated the contest’s organisers on their initiative to draw attention to the job opportunities in fighting cyber crime and for attracting new talent to swell the ranks of British cyber security professionals.

Disclosing Hidden Security Talent

Last month, Baroness Neville-Jones revealed that Internet crime costs the country £27 billion a year and said that the government was determined to work with industry in its fight against cyber espionage and theft. Last year, the Cabinet Office invested a “seed corn” sum to launch CSC but Neville-Jones announced that the government would put in £180,000 for the 2012 competition which commences at the end of this month. This still leaves £350,000 to be raised from the private sector, she announced.

Running a close second to Summers, and beating numerous practising security professionals, was 17-year old student Stuart Rennie from Cambridgeshire. The success of two “amateurs” in rising to the top was seen as proof of  the CSC’s premise that IT security work is a vocation. Adrian Baldwin, a security researcher for CSC sponsor Hewlett-Packard, said that the competition showed that there is more than technical ability involved.

“Good security professionals need a degree of paranoia to alert them to what may happen and take action to defend against it,” he explained.

The only woman to feature in the 25 players involved in the grand final on Saturday was Lucy Robson. Last year, she roped in Rennie and another Cambridgeshire Facebook friend Yung Yu-Law to enter the QinetiQ Network Defence stage of the competition which she saw as a “fantastic opportunity”. Robson was highly praised by the judges for her leadership qualities and general performance and received an internship offer from Alasdair Rodgers, MD of QinetiQ, in recognition of this.

“The competition has been really successful in finding new talent that would not be accessible in any other way. The CSC has been an extremely rewarding operation,” he said.

The CSC was initiated by the SANS Institute and received further Platinum sponsorship from PwC, QinetiQ, Sophos,Detica, SIAC, Cassisian, Hewlett-Packard, DC3 (US Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center). Most of the sponsors also provided prizes in the form of training, free entry to security certification examinations, and internships for selected winners. The Open University, 7 Safe and ISC2 also contributed prizes as part of the 52 companies that supported this year’s competition.