Emagine IT Hosts Inaugural Emagine The Future Capture The Flag Competition

Emagine IT Hosts Inaugural Emagine The Future Capture The Flag Competition

Did you know that on average, there are more than 700,000 cyber job openings in the US? Even more important, there are far too few qualified cyber professionals entering the force to fill these roles leaving us vulnerable to an ever-vigilant adversary.

Put simply, we need more amazing, talented, and curious people to experience what it's like to be a member of this growing, thriving, and dynamic cyber community - our future depends on it.

This is why on November 11th, 2023, Emagine IT, Inc. (EIT) hosted their inaugural Collegiate Capture the Flag (CTF) Competition in partnership with our venue partner Loyola University Maryland and charity partner CyberVets.org. The goal of this event was to bring together the next generation of cyber talent from universities across the Mid-Atlantic for a dynamic experience where they could showcase their cyber skills, learn, compete, and even network with leaders in cyber from several prominent industries.

The results? 58 student players from 10 universities, self-selected into 14 teams.

Before the CTF game started, we put together a series of interactive fireside chats where the attendees were able to eat breakfast, fuel up, and engage with industry leaders to hear first hand what it takes to make an impact in the world of cyber. There were 4 individual fireside chat segments designed to offer 10 minutes of moderated questions followed by 5 minutes of a audience Q&A.

Our panelists represent different facets within the cybersecurity community:

1. Gabriel Pearson - Currently serving as Senior Cybersecurity Analyst at T Rowe Price, after transitioning from managing the primary incident response and management team at CMS - the 2nd largest federal civilian agency. Our fireside chat focused on how he ended up in incident management and response, competing in DEF CON, and the way ambitious cyber candidates can make their mark with hiring cybersecurity managers. - Watch Now
2. Travis "JT" Dill - an Intelligence community representative who had an 18-year career at NSA and US Cyber Command working as a signal data collections analyst and finishing his government career as a naval cryptologic warfare officer and started two ventures - CEO at Cybergenic Systems and Co-founder and Vice President at CyberVets.org. We discussed what qualified means for cybersecurity positions, becoming an expert within the field, and the rise of AI within cybersecurity. - Watch Now
3. Thomas Schankweiler - From starting as an Information Assurance PM for HHS's CISO, to becoming the Director of the Division of Information Systems Security for the Financial Management Systems group at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), Tom has spent his career dedicated to protecting American healthcare. Our fireside chat focused on Tom's experiences during COVID-19, how adversaries disrupt the business of an organization, and how crucial clear and concise communication is within the cybersecurity world. - Watch Now
4. Major Michael Kranch - a representative of the DoD, specifically the US Army, who is a Cyber Operations Major that also coaches a cyber team for CTF events. Having spent his entire career with the Army and is now a Cyber Operations Major who prefers leading through example by spending his time on the keyboard. We discussed his interest in joining the Army, what the threat landscape is like for him today, and how he deals with emotional and mental burnout. - Watch Now

The fireside chat provided a unique opportunity for students to learn from industry leaders at the top of the cyber industry from all sectors - defense, intelligence, financial, and healthcare - and engage with them directly during the Q&A portion. Topics ranged from personal experiences, career paths, conflict resolution, personality dynamics at work, advice for navigating the cyber world, and much more.

The Day's Events

Once everyone arrived, the day started with breakfast and the series of fireside chats. This gave some time for players to fuel up and socialize while also gaining instant value via the Q&A sessions. Regardless of how the gameplay experience went, they knew within the first hour they would leave with actionable insights from the best in the industry.

After the panel, our gameplay provider, MetaCTF provided a brief overview of the game and how it would be played. In this case, it was a Jeopardy-style CTF, where there are a series of preselected categories with questions in each ranging in difficulty. Solve question/problem and win the points. The harder the problem the more points you win for your team. But act fast because if another team answer the question first, they receive the points. Like Jeopardy, the player or in this case the team with the most points wins. While the categories can differ based on the style of CTF event, the categories we had for our event were: Binary Exploitation, Cryptography, Cyber Range, Forensics, Reconnaissance, Reverse Engineering, Web Exploitation, and Other.

The game kicked off, the techno hacker music was set, and it was show time.

Six hours of exciting and dynamic gameplay (with some pizza served mid-session) it was time to announce our winners.

First, were the door prizes. Everyone in attendance received a raffle ticket on the way in for one of four surprise prizes - 2 USB Rubber Ducky Hotplugs, 1 Shark Jack, and 1 Malicious Cable Detector by O.MG.

Lastly, our grand prize winner - beating out 13 other teams, Mason CC from George Mason University was crowned the winner with 7600 points!

Overall, the feedback was incredible and we can't wait for the our Emagine The Future CTF 2024 so we can build on this success.

Even better, was the feedback. We caught up with some of the players on the way out and here's what they had to say:

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How were you feeling at the start of today's events?

• "Pretty excited. I've been looking forward to this for the past month. I didn't feel prepared as I should've been, but when I started the challenges, a lot of them were easier than I thought."

What was your favorite part of today's events?

• The variety of challenges and the different levels of difficulty.

What was something you didn't expect from today?

• Definitely the crowd. It was a really impressive turnout.

How do you feel now at the end of the CTF?

• "Accomplished! Even though we didn't get a high score, it is our first foray into cybersecurity. We haven't yet had this experience at Loyola, and this opportunity helped us grow and learn so much about cybersecurity and networking."
• "I didn't know I could do this but now I feel incredibly capable of what I can do with cybersecurity."
• "I feel like I worked my brain to the fullest."

We would like to thank each university¹ and partner who helped to bring this event to life with such a tight deadline (schools, CyberVets, Loyola, etc.). We are incredibly proud of what we put on however, we know there is room for improvement and we thank everyone who provided feedback. Our goal with the next event is to double down on creating an experience where the future leaders of cyber can socialize and have fun, network, collaborate, and gain actionable insights and experience to help them make their mark within the cyber world. See you in 2024!

¹Thank you to all the students and Universities who participated in the CTF Event: George Mason University, University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of Maryland, Loyola University, Capitol Tech University, PennState University, Towson University, University of Maryland Global Campus, Morgan State University, and Messiah University!

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