In an auditorium temporarily transformed into a kind of cyber war room, 85 "good guy" computer hackers hunched over their laptops for about four hours Friday morning, furiously typing away.
It was the last day of the weeklong U.S. Cyber Challenge Camp hosted by J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College. The campers, working in teams with such names as "Magenta," "Rose" and "Fuchsia," were competing to see who was best at detecting and fighting cybercriminals bent on hacking into secure computer systems.
To do that, they had to take on the role of hackers themselves in a virtual game of "capture the flag," which required them to penetrate a system designed by Tim Rosenberg, director of cyberservices for iSight Partners, a Dallas-based security company.
"You're hackers," Rosenberg told the crowd before the competition began. "Have fun. Poke, prod. Lift up tables, metaphorically speaking."
The campers, ages 18 to 47, were from many states and backgrounds, and included students and professionals. For the best of them, participation in the invitation-only camp could lead to careers in the fast-growing field of cybersecurity. That might include jobs with government agencies such as the National Security Agency, the CIA or the Defense Department, or in the private sector, as the volume and sophistication of cyber-attacks become a growing concern for governments and businesses.
According to government estimates, one of the fastest-growing jobs in the next decade will be in network administration, including cybersecurity, said Karen Evans, national director of the U.S. Cyber Challenge Camp. The nonprofit organization grew from a federal government commission that studied cybersecurity and the need for professionals in the field.
Ramping up the nation's supply of trained cybersecurity experts is like "fielding a major league baseball team while also trying to build a farm league," Evans said.
The Cyber Camps are held in several cities across the nation to help identify talented individuals for careers in security.
"The idea of running these camps is to make sure they have the right skills," Evans said. "The ultimate goal is to mitigate the risk for the nation, since we are so dependent on information technology. So they will go into jobs in critical infrastructure, government and private industry, because all of that is interconnected."
This week's camp at J. Sargeant Reynolds' Parham Road campus in Henrico County included hands-on training, panel discussions on ethics and other issues, a job fair, and classes on computer forensics.
Among the campers was Erye Hernandez, a 29-year-old Sterling resident and a computer science student at George Mason University.
Her goal is a job in cybersecurity. "It seems that everybody right now needs someone in security," she said. "But for me, I just find it exciting."
"When I was little, I really liked playing with computers," said Hernandez, who also works as a network operations center engineer. "I spent hours on them. This is a natural transition for me."
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