Posts by SColes

As a CSC contestant...

So is KPMG not using the corporate social responsibility fund for this?

It’s hard to not sound too biased as I owe the CSC a lot but it’s sad to read this. In the 4 live events I attended with the CSC I have never met a KPMG representative or was told about KPMG opportunities.

I have to praise the Cyber Security Challenge UK for the work they have done. Although their core result is to raise awareness I think the greatest ‘by-product’ is the boost in confidence that all the contestants get. The experiences that the CSC can give are awesome, to be able to tell people you went for NetWars at Bletchley Park or visited Aston Martin Prodrive. I haven’t had an interview since where there these stories haven’t failed to impress even non-techies. So much confidence from having a genuinely interesting technical development story.

Although the CSC challenges may not be ‘realistic’ they have to meet realistic constraints. The contestants, which are generally full time students/employed, are giving up their weekends and evenings to practice and turn up to the events. Modelling a game that accounts for solving “problems over a long period of time” I would argue isn’t a realistic option. I’m also surprised to read that the ROI by visiting Cambridge’s computing society is better then the CSC 'investment' - way to cut out the rest of the nation.

I’d love to see much smaller companies get involved with the cybersecurity challenge. Those where directors and shareholders would take the time to actually observe the live competition instead of waiting for CV’s to come in. However I wonder if the sponsorship costs force only the large corporates to be able to make the cut.

Finally - I second the above comment about GCHQ’s starting salary for technology graduates– which is surprisingly small. IBM, Microsoft and BT are all offering a 25-35% better starting salary for none specialist roles. “People work here because they want to work here” was the justification for this - a tad pretentious perhaps.