Registration for the 2011 Cyber Security Challenge UK has opened today, as the industry goes on its second annual search to find the IT security talent of the future.
More than 4,000 people registered for the event last year, which is sponsored by the Cabinet Office, SAIC, Sophos, PricewaterhouseCoopers, QinetiQ, HP Labs, SANS Institute and Cassidian, the defence and security subsidiary of EADS.
The free-to-enter, multi-round competition will encourage participants to use and develop skills that fall into the three main categories of secure network design, maintaining secure systems from common vulnerabilities and logically solving problems using techniques deployed by forensic technology investigators.
The first round of the challenge is played remotely, and winners of that round will then be invited to play against each other, face-to-face, in round 2. In the final round, the Master Class Challenge, competitors will be required to apply their technical and business skills to simulated real-world problems.
Dan Summers, a postman with a background in IT, won last year's Cyber Security Challenge, and was awarded with £37,000-worth of prizes to help kick-start a career in information security.
Information on how to register for the competition can be found here.