CivilianCyber in partnership with the Southwest Node of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative recently ran a two-month ideation challenge that attracted student teams from multiple higher education institutions across Virginia. The challenge was hosted on CivilianCyber’s Workforce Innovation Network platform. The problem statement focused on the development of ideas and strategies to prepare small businesses to address the five most common cybersecurity challenges. Over the course of the six-week project each student team partnered with an industry professional who assisted them in developing their solutions. On May 25th the teams presented their solution to representatives of CivilianCyber and CCI, as well as a panel of judges. While there were three winning teams, all of the students advanced their knowledge and better prepared themselves to enter the cybersecurity profession.
First place – Train, not Strain, Chiwoo Chang (University of Virginia’s College at Wise) and Samuel Williams (Radford University).
Second place – Business Information Defense Systems, Dylan Do, Phillip Ma, and Siddarth Selvakumar (all University of Virginia’s College at Wise)
Third place – How to Counter Cyberattacks in Small Business, Adam Flowers, Sandile Hill, and John Ramsoondar (Radford University)