The Colorado Cyber Games

The Colorado Cyber Games is an open to the public, inaugural competition hosted in October by the Colorado Cyber Resource Center (CCRC), an offspring of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCC). One of the overarching goals of the Colorado Cyber Games was to help develop candidate to employer connections by allowing competitors to showcase their skills in front of employers. The event ran throughout the entire month of October in 2022 with a single challenge being released at 11am EST every Friday. Competitors had until 8pm EST the following Monday to submit a challenge artifact to prove that they successfully finished that week’s challenge. The winner for each challenge was typically announced the following day. The challenges could include multiple modules that competitors had to fully complete and would progressively increase in difficulty as the month went on. Competitors begin challenges with no prior knowledge of the tasks or requirements, or the virtual environment they would be placed into. The winner of each respective challenge was determined by the time it took them to complete all the modules involved. The winner of the 2022 Colorado Cyber Games was a Johnson & Wales University student, Kyle Leupold, who took first place in three out of four challenges despite going up against competitors who had far greater industry experience. Prior to this event, Kyle did not have experience competing in cybersecurity-focused virtual competitions such as this one. For each challenge that was won, Kyle was awarded a yearlong subscription to an online cyber-range platform, RangeForce, which is used in the cybersecurity industry to learn new skills and topics, as well as to verify current knowledge through simulated labs and assessments. By winning three challenges, Kyle was awarded three year-long subscriptions of which he decided to gift two to his co-workers here at the University