Incident Response Competition Chance for Women in Security to Test Skills

L-R: Ryan Janosevic (Retrospect Labs), Mike Barber (A3C), Vanessa Wong (Saab Australia) and David Goodman (Department of Innovation & Skills).

15 December 2021

Retrospect Labs, A3C and the AWSN (Australian Women in Security Network) have partnered to provide the first competition style incident response exercise for women working in the sector across Australia. Participants used technical and non-technical skills to work on a cyber incident scenario self-paced over one week.

For one week, starting on the Wednesday 8th December, participants were provided with a scenario that simulated a real-world incident. The exercise include a forensic artefacts that participants have to analyse to understand what malicious activities have occurred and how the adversary undertook those activities (their TTPs used). Participants had to undertake standard incident response activities, such as identifying IOCs, providing mitigation/remediation recommendations, and assisting media/legal teams.

Throughout the exercise, teams submitted certain tasks common to incident response activities. These tasks were used by a panel of expert judges, who evaluated the performance of each team during the event and based on the tasks they completed, and named winner/s during the panel discussion at an event hosted at the A3C on Thursday the 15th December.

Judges included Mike Barber (CEO A3C), Bex Nixbert (Managing Consultant, DFIR), David Goodman (Chief Information Office, Department for Innovation & Skills SA) Vanessa Wong (Professional Services, Saab Australia). A special address was delivered by Kim Valois, CISO of Flinders University, who provided both in person and virtual guests an insight into the unique career of a CISO.

A range of fantastic prizes were awarded to the top three teams. The winning team received a feature in the Women in Security magazine, Runners up received a training voucher for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Incident Response in the Cloud held at the A3C, and the third team received a free year of AWSN membership.

For more information regarding future competitions, for a range of audiences please contact Retrospect Labs.

Join the AWSN community to connect with women in the industry or seeking to enter the field, gain the tools, knowledge, network and platforms to build your career. Find out more about membership here.

The Women in Security Magazine is a free online publication. Register here.