As reported previously, the CSC - which is now in its second year - is backed by a consortium of UK commercial, academic and public sector organisations, and is run along similar lines as the US Cyber Challenge launched back in 2009.

The competition challenges are being designed by industry leaders using the latest technology to test the nation's cyber security skills and identify the UK's future cyber security professionals.

In this week's stage of the CSC, around 700 UK amateur cyber defenders will show off their skills in competitions designed by the SANS Institute and Sophos, and which will examples of real-life cyber attacks to assess competitors' knowledge of infrastructure security.

The new competition, say the organisers, includes a focus on the kind of vulnerabilities within domain name systems (DNS) that allowed the websites of more than 200 companies including The Daily Telegraph, UPS and Vodafone to be attacked by Turkish hackers earlier this month.

James Lyne, director of technology strategy with Sophos said that the impact the Turkish attacks had on established corporate websites highlights that DNS and web-servers are an increasingly vital part of an integrated security strategy.

“The next generation of cyber defenders must be well versed in these systems as part of their broad understanding of cyber threats and have the skills to safeguard and protect them. This is why we've worked with SANS Institute to develop this competition for the Cyber Security Challenge UK”, he said.

“We are hoping to find people who can handle these situations, identify and remove vulnerabilities and put in place strategies to minimise both the time a system is compromised and the ultimate risk to its users”, he added.

The competition itself, he explained. takes the form of a quiz testing candidates' knowledge on a broad range of topics related to managing infrastructure securely, and their ability to identify and remediate flaws that could be abused.

Competitors will require knowledge on networking, websites, databases and email servers on multiple operating systems and platforms.

Over at the SANS Institute, meanwhile, Terry Neal, the training group's EMEA director, said that some competitors may be surprised to find a quiz based penetration test rather than the usual format which sees attacks fired at a system to uncover weaknesses.

“We are trying to test their knowledge of a broad range of potential vulnerabilities and assess how they put their expertise to use. In this way we are examining the aptitude to develop counter attack strategies as well as the raw knowledge of the technologies that will serve candidates well in later rounds of the Cyber Security Challenge UK”, he said

Plans call for the winner - and a number of other high achieving candidates - from this week's competition will qualify for the next stage of the challenge, the SAIC CyberNEXS-King of the Hill competition, which takes place in January.