This month, I participated in a 4-hour-long Cyber Defense Competition called Hivestorm. There were over 300 teams competing, with each team securing four virtual machines, two Linux and two Windows, in accordance with the given business conditions. For each vulnerability that you find and fix, you get points toward your team’s total.

I was the team’s Windows Admin, meaning that I would be in charge of both of the Windows machines. On competition day, I would work with the other Windows member on our team with their machine while I work on my own machine.

On the day of the competition, we learned that only two of us would be competing that day. This meant that each of us was running two machines for the entire competition. This did not sound too difficult until we learned that each computer could only run one virtual machine at a time. This proved to be a challenge in time management. You would have to constantly be switching between the two machines and could not spend your entire time on one machine because you would not get any points on the other machine.

Hivestorm is very similar to the CyberPatriot competitions that I did in high school. I was able to take the knowledge that I got from it and take it to Hivestorm. It was an amazing experience and gave me a chance to further my cybersecurity knowledge. I look forward to competing again next year.