The 18 prizes – which include internships and other education/training opportunities with leading companies, bursaries at universities, and SANS Institute and 7Safe training – are designed to assist IT security students in pursuing their career.
As reported previously, the Cyber Security Challenge UK centres on a series of online and face-to-face competitions designed by leading security, education and government organisations as a response to the shortage of skilled professionals in the cyber security sector.
The challenge was launched at the end of July 2010 and three competitions were immediately opened for registration: the SANS and Sophos Treasure Hunt; the QinetiQ Network Defence competition; and the US Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3) Digital Forensics Challenge.
This weekend sees the culmination of these competitions, what is hoped to be an annual challenge, and will see the abilities of finalists tested against real-world malware, using simulated business environments.
According to Judy Baker, the director of the challenge program, the idea behind the challenge came about when she visited the US a while back and saw how President Obama's administration had identified a skills shortage on the IT security arena, and what the government was doing to get round the problem.
"In the US, it's been said there is a shortage of between 10,000 and 20,000 people, so I started thinking whether things were any different over here. After returning to the UK and discussing IT security recruitment with a number of colleagues, I realised things were exactly the same here", she said.
"The problem is that most undergraduates have little or no access to IT security training through the standard educational channels. It's only when you get to post-graduate level that there are security modules available with science courses", she added.
This situation, she told Infosecurity, is despite there being high levels of unemployment amongst graduates.
It also, she says, is why the challenge managed to attract 4,000 applications within three weeks of the scheme being launched last year.
"We think the success of the challenge is the beginnings of what could well become an ongoing public/private sector partnership", she told Infosecurity, adding that – along with her colleagues Adrian Baldwin, senior security researcher with HP Labs and Bryan Lillie, head of the cyber security customer solutions centre at Cassidian – she hopes this weekend's finals will be entertaining, as well as productive for all concerned.