Dr. Rick Forno, CSEE’s Cybersecurity Graduate Program Director, was a presenter at the inaugural BSides Charm City technical security conference held at Howard County Community College in Columbia, MD over the weekend of 11-12 April 2015. His talk described what is needed to develop and operate viable high school and college student cyber-competition teams and framed around what he called the ‘POTS process’ — People, Organization, Technology, and Sustainability.

Several lessons learned from his four years overseeing the Maryland Cyber Challenge (MDC3) served as the basis for his presentation remarks, including the need to foster greater diversity and acceptance within cyber-competition teams — and by extension, the cybersecurity industry itself.