CSEE's Dr. Richard Forno, Cybersecurity GPD and Assistant Director of UMBC's Center for Cybersecurity, has received an $84K grant from the National Security Agency (NSA) to fund the prizes for student winners at the 2013 Maryland Cyber Challenge and Competition (MDC3) finals that will take place at the CyberMaryland 2013 conference in Baltimore on October 8 & 9.
The Maryland Cyber Challenge aims to build excitement around pursuing education and careers in the cybersecurity field by bringing together teams of students and cyber practitioners to compete in a series of ever-more-complex cybersecurity challenges. To date, approximately 700 competitors across 115 teams have participated in the past two competitions. With the generous support of NSA, UMBC has provided more than $160,000 in monetary prizes to highly skilled and talented computer science students over the past two years.
As in years past, first place team members each will receive $5K and runners-up receive $2K each to contribute toward their higher education and training in the cybersecurity and computer science fields. Identical prizes are awarded both in the high school and college divisions.
Dr. Forno and UMBC are co-founders of MDC3, which is a partnership with SAIC/Leidos, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED), the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), and the Technology Council of Maryland (TCM).