As a part of “Techtober”, Arkansas annual season of celebrating technology, The Venture Center hosted a hands-on cyber competition to train the tech workforce called JOLT Cyber Challenge at the Walton School of Business Oct. 11-13.
The competition was run by cyber security and technology development experts called game-masters, who develop a variety of puzzles and challenges, taken on by teams of three to four people. The challenges were grouped by category and participants could earn more points by winning more difficult challenges.
According to the Venture Center, the categories included remote access exploits, web vulnerabilities, code breaking, physical security, privilege escalation, reverse engineering, code manipulation.
A record number of close to 40 teams and nearly 150 people participated in JOLT’s sixth iteration.
“The objective is to utilize these resources and these gamemasters and these puzzles and challenges they’ve created to help our workforce develop a better capacity to deal with cyber crimes and to be able to improve their situational awareness to these things and to be able to evolve their skill sets…” says Wayne Miller, executive director of The Venture Center.
While participants worked to heighten their sense of awareness and learn more about the prevention of these types of cyber crimes and information breaches, they were also being provided with an opportunity to network with other attendees.
“One of the expectations I always have is that they will learn a lot from each other,” Miller says “It enables them to create new opportunities potentially for jobs, obviously to make new friends, [and] develop relationships.”
Lead game-master Christopher Wright, CEO of Citadel Systems, also highlighted the community aspects that required participants to work together to complete tasks. This aspect of the challenge, he says, is designed to strengthen the state’s tech community.
“JOLT is a community-focused cybersecurity competition that brings students and industry together to solve puzzles, think critically, and network,” said Wright. “The Game Masters are committed to this event because we know the high cost of vulnerability for businesses and individuals. We are deeply committed to encouraging and strengthening Arkansas’ tech community and to insulating individuals and businesses from devastating cyber attacks.”
These relationships have a high chance of turning into something profitable for many of these participants.
“I think what we’re doing is really important for the state,” Miller says. “We have a lot of businesses within the state with a need for someone with these types of skills and skills beyond these.”
Participants competed from 4 p.m. on Friday to 1 p.m. on Sunday.
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