On Saturday 4th February, we took part in the South East Final of the CyberFirst Girls competition. The event was held at the offices of NATS (National Air traffic Security), just outside Portsmouth. There were 12 teams (of 4 students), who had qualified for the final out of over 8000 students who initially entered the competition in the South East region.
The setting was very professional; it felt like we were actually working in an office. We were given a comfortable working space with a computer each. We had two sessions of “game play” either side of lunch (3.5 hours overall). We were given a number of cyber security challenges of varying difficulty, each worth a different amount of points.
We had to solve cyber related puzzles, with everything from artificial intelligence to cryptography, such as finding loopholes in website design. There were also “physical” challenges such as sudoku, a labyrinth tube and enigma code-breaking. The teachers, parents and guardians were sent out of the room so we had to solve the challenges independently.
Our team worked really well together and managed to finish in eighth place. Each of us was awarded a certificate, a pen and a cork notebook. We were a little bit jealous of the winning team each receiving a laptop as their prize.
The CyberFirst girls’ competition was a great experience and an amazing opportunity to improve and use our computing skills.
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