Achievement and curiosity: cyber games champions

Hard work pays off: congratulations team

On Saturday November 18, just one day after their exams had finished, a team of three Year 11 students represented Northcote High School at the inaugural Cyber Games Competition at La Trobe University. Our team was Issa Chanzi, Sam Eggleston, and Kiarash Nikoo, who have trained since August on industry-standard software to learn the ins and outs of cyber security. After being knocked into the wildcard bracket in the first round, Northcote went on to take first place in Round 2, Round 3, and in an intense 25-minute final match between the top 3 teams, took out the championship!

The Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University awarded our young cyber-gurus a trophy and a brand-new iPhone 8 for each, courtesy of Optus. A big thank-you to Quantum Victoria and La Trobe for organising the event, to the group of students who came out to support our team and congratulations to the runners-up Bendigo Senior and Viewbank. Look for the engraved trophy in the coming weeks, which will stay at our school until the start of next year’s Cyber Games!

Erik Koopmans

Teacher & Team facilitator

What is Cyber Games?

Cyber Games, launched in March 2017, is a collaboration between La Trobe University, Cisco and Optus and Quantum Victoria, in partnership with the Science Teachers Association of Victoria and Life Journey/Day of STEM.

Cyber Games provides secondary students with an immersive experience to introduce them to the world of cyber and help develop their aptitudes and skills needed to work in this industry – one of the world’s fastest growing employment fields.

Cyber games is one key component of an emerging ecosystem of cyber awareness activities that will provide:

• Deeper  understanding for  the need to be cyber aware. The 2016 CERT Australia Threat Report showed an alarming growth in cyber-attacks on business and government. Over a 12-month period, there was an estimated 1,095 serious cyber security incidents on government systems and more than 14,804 cyber security incidents impacting Australian businesses.
• A pipeline of secondary students into TAFE and university education to provide the workforce needs of this growing sector. Estimates of unfulfilled roles worldwide are as high as 1.5 million.

La Trobe Vice-Chancellor Professor John Dewar says Cyber Games is part of the University’s commitment to provide students with the opportunities and skills they will need to work in cyber security – one of the world’s fastest-growing employment fields.

“There is a huge need for a new workforce of cyber defenders,” said Professor Dewar. “This initiative will not only educate a new generation of cyber-literate students, it will also help close the gap on a looming skills shortage.

“Cyber Games will simulate real-world threat scenarios for these secondary school students, who we hope will go on to study cyber security at La Trobe University and perhaps then work for Cisco, Optus or any of our other business partners.”

The initiative was welcomed by Soula Bennett, the President of the Science Teachers’ Association of Victoria and Director of Quantum Victoria, who said that Cyber Security is a burgeoning field presenting many career pathways for students.

The Games

Cisco’s industry standard Cyber Range Platform – a cyber-attack simulator using real life scenarios that can progressively increase in complexity and difficulty – has been adapted for use by high school students by Quantum Victoria in the Cyber Games competition to ensure a safe and controlled environment.

Teams of three students (Years 10-12) were set a range of tasks to defend against simulated attacks. In a knock-out competition, the team that identifies the task the fastest, wins.

In this way, Cyber Games rewards the best defenders against cyber and is deliberately not framed as attacker against defender.

The Cyber Games final was held at La Trobe University to coincide with its 50th Anniversary Closing Event. There were 11 teams from across Victorian competing.

The games were opened by Prof John Dewar, Vice Chancellor La Trobe University and Ms Soula Bennett, Director of Quantum Victoria and President of the Science Teachers’ Association of Victoria.

The final was a knock-out round robin format with unsuccessful teams still alive through access to a wildcard at two stages in the competition (refer to flowchart). Students from Northcote High School secured a place in the final after successfully beating 4 other teams in the first wildcard section and then a further 5 teams in the final wildcard play-off.

In addition to being the first Cyber Games Champions, the winning team will be offered direct entry into the La Trobe University Bachelor of Cybersecurity course (subject to meeting course prerequisites).