Newswise — University of Central Florida’s Cameron Whitehead wins CyberForce Conquer the Hill: Adventure Competition 2024.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) and DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory announced Cameron Whitehead from the University of Central Florida as the winner of the 2024 CyberForce® Conquer the Hill™: Adventure Competition.
Cameron Whitehead was one of 112 students from 71 accredited U.S. colleges and universities who competed virtually to complete work-based cybersecurity tasks and challenges during a full day of energy sector-related adventure.
According to the 2023 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study, there is a shortage of 482,985 cybersecurity professionals in the U.S. With the increasing amount of information placed on the internet and a growing Internet of Things, developing a strong cybersecurity workforce is a high priority. Adventure is one of three DOE Conquer the Hill individual-based competitions, which are part of the CyberForce Program led by Argonne.
“It’s exciting to see the next generation of cybersecurity professionals emerging in these competitions.” — Amanda Theel, leader of Argonne’s Workforce Development group and the CyberForce Program
The Conquer the Hill competitions and overall CyberForce Program are designed to increase hands-on education for college students, raise awareness of the nexus between critical infrastructure and cybersecurity, and promote basic understanding of cybersecurity in real world scenarios, with the goal to help bridge the cybersecurity workforce gap.
Similar to last year’s competition, students were presented with a checkerboard of easy, medium and hard cyber challenges that they could tackle up to three times in any order they wished. Their performance on each task resulted in a score visible only to them and to the competition organizers. The winner received the highest points by completing the most tasks successfully in the least amount of time.
“We introduced these fun, small competitions in 2021 and students seemed to benefit from the opportunity to evaluate different areas of cybersecurity that they might not see in school,” said Amanda Theel, who leads the Workforce Development group in Argonne’s Strategic Security Sciences division and the CyberForce Program. “It might lead them to develop cybersecurity skills and interests in logs, forensics or encryption, all of which might be new topics for them.”
All of the anomalies in the Conquer the Hill: Adventure competition are mapped to the National Institute of Standards and Technology National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education framework. By designing the challenges within this framework, students will better understand where they are proficient in their cybersecurity skills. It also helps them isolate areas in which they need to improve.
“The resilience and security of our nation’s energy systems depend on a highly skilled, diverse workforce,” said CESER Director Puesh Kumar. “DOE’s Adventure competition, part of DOE’s CyberForce Program, helps students hone their skills and encourages them to consider joining the growing cyber energy workforce. Congratulations to Cameron Whitehead for winning the 2024 Adventure competition!”
In addition to the Conquer the Hill: Adventure Competition, the CyberForce Program will host other upcoming activities in 2024, including:
- A virtual career fair for established professionals on May 15.
- The Conquer the Hill™ Reign competition on July 13.
- Three informational webinars on June 12, October 9 and December 11.
- A collegiate virtual career fair on September 12.
- The grand CyberForce Competition® on November 9, where college and university students compete head-to-head on teams of four to six members each.
Both DOE and Argonne see the CyberForce Program, and a competition like Adventure, as making strides toward building awareness about what cybersecurity and energy companies do, what skills are highly valued, and what types of positions are available for the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
Conquer the Hill: Adventure is funded by the DOE’s Office of CESER and led by Argonne.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
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