Video by Kerri McCune/CNS-TV
BALTIMORE – High School and college students gathered Saturday at the Baltimore Convention Center to compete in the first ever Maryland Cyber Challenge.
UMBC joined together with technology company SAIC to host the competition. The pay-off for the winning team was pretty good: a $5,000 scholarship to each member of the top team.
During the competition, students were asked to work as a team to administer and coordinate defense of a computer network. They had to detect network attacks and defend critical information resources from those attacks.
“[Our goal was] to get the students really interested in cyber security as a possible career field or educational field, and what better way to do it through a challenge where there’s scholarship money on the line?” said Dr. Rick Forno, Graduate Cyber Security Program Director at UMBC.
According to the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, cyber security is the one of the fastest growing industries in the state. There are currently 70,000 cyber security jobs currently in Maryland, the department said.
“Maryland is at the epicenter of cyber security and we intend to keep it that way,” said William Kirwan, Chancellor of the University System of Maryland.