Effective Competitions for Broadening Participation in Cybersecurity
John Oliver, Cassidy Elwell · 2024
Abstract Cybersecurity is a national priority and the demand for a qualified cybersecurity workforce has never been higher. To address this need, cybersecurity competitions have been promoted as a way to increase participation in cybersecurity amongst high school students. Through observations of high school cybersecurity competitions, we find that these competitions focus narrowly on good computer skills. In contrast, the characteristics of an effective cybersecurity professional, in addition to good computer skills, also include: the ability to think critically, the ability to function on teams and the ability to communicate effectively, none of which are emphasized in most high school cybersecurity competitions. Additionally, the privacy and ethical ramifications of cybersecurity, are often omitted from standard high school cybersecurity competitions. In this paper, we detail the design and delivery of a cyber security competition called the California Cyber Innovation Challenge (CCIC). The CCIC featured an immersive digital forensics competition highlighting the need for the protection of critical infrastructure and privacy concerns of IoT devices. Student teams performed forensics analysis, criminal timeline reconstruction and had to defend their findings to a panel of criminal justice professionals. Using feedback from the competition, we argue that by emphasizing the broader set of cybersecurity-related skills, we can promote a higher level of engagement as well as have a broader appeal to high school students.