Second winner of Cyber Security Challenge announced

The second winner of the yearly Cyber Security Challenge was announced on the weekend.

Jonathan Millican, a 19-year-old student of computer science at Jesus College, Cambridge, beat thousands of alternative competitors during the last six months to win the challenge.

In the general weekend, Millican needed to demonstrate a number technical, communication and leadership skills inside the Challenge Masterclass Grand Final, designed by HPLabs and Cassidian, where his performance was judged to be the suitable of greater than 30 finalists.

This was a simulation of an organization experiencing security challenges in which finalists needed to identify the difficulty, solution and sell it to the company's decision makers.

The Cyber Security Challenge UK is a sequence of national competitions geared toward attracting talented people into the profession and informing them about cyber security careers. The primary winner was announced in March 2011 as Dan Summers, who moved from his job as a postman to sign up for the safety team at Royal Mail.

Talking to SC Magazine, Millican said he initially examine the challenge in a newspaper and he felt he was able to joining in because it "was open to non-professionals".

He said: “I worked my way around it, i'm more excited by computers and it is more about what's there and checking out where i'm. This is a learning process. i've got done little or no in gaming programming, it's more about building applications for social networking sites and schools.”

Asked if he was planning a career in information security, Millican said he desired to complete his university course after which the masters course in information security at Royal Holloway University; portion of his prize is a bursary to this.

He said: “I have gotten many years to compliment university but it is definitely something i'll turn out to be staring at, i could well go into cyber security because it is an extraordinarily interesting area.”

Millican also won internships at private companies, industry training courses, access to industry conferences and membership to professional bodies reminiscent of the National Skills Academy for IT.

The final also featured the launch of the 2012/13 programme, beginning in April, and the launch of recent competitions from BT, (ISC)2 and Get Safe Online.

Judy Baker, director of the Cyber Security Challenge UK, also announced the discharge of latest guidance at the Challenge website, including sponsors' answers to candidate questions about careers and courses.

“Every new challenge programme is designed to expand the opportunities on offer for non-professionals to construct a career in cyber security,” she said.

“This is our most ambitious programme yet. It combines competitions, education opportunities, career-enhancing experiences, a wealth of online guidance and networking events to make the Challenge a valued source of info and learning about the right way to become a cyber-security professional.”

Asked if he would recommend the Cyber Security Challenge to others, Millican said: “You should definitely enter when you are young. On the final stage you will get away with not being technical as you're portion of a team and you'll learn from others.”