In 2009, partnering with the U.S. Air Force, Air Force Association (AFA) and SAIC, the CIAS co-founded CyberPatriot, the world’s largest cyber defense competition and the Air Force Association’s National Youth Cyber Education Program. The competition’s purpose and design are to inspire students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines critical to our nation’s future.
Check out the official competition website at USCyberPatriot.org!
Built by the CIAS
The CIAS designs, builds and supplies the technology and virtual machines used in the CyberPatriot Cyber Defense Competition component of the program. CIAS personnel supports the online competitions and National Finals components of the CyberPatriot program.
A few years after CyberPatriot launched, in 2012, the competition had outgrown its original competition system. Well over 1,000 teams were participating and a new competition system was needed. At that time, the CIAS was asked to develop a competition system that could easily scale to a large number of teams. The CIAS team, led by Dr. Keith Harrison, created the CyberPatriot Competition System (CCS), which is now used in all competition images. The CCS gives competitors near real-time scoring feedback and a public scoreboard, and by 2014 it was a full-up competition system using Windows and Linux-based systems. The system continues to keep pace with CyberPatriot’s growing needs and the needs of sister competitions in Europe, Saudi Arabia, Australia and others.
Competing Across The World
In the 2023/2024 season, there were 5,183 teams and over 26,000 competitors. The CIAS’ Cyber Competition System (CCS) used in CyberPatriot is also used in competitions in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Saudi Arabia.
