ACSC team takes 4th place at Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge Published March 19, 2015 By Airman 1st Class Alexa Culbert 42d Air Base Wing Public Affairs MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, ALa-- -- Airmen from Air Command and Staff College earned 4th place at the Atlantic Council's third annual Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge competition March 13 - 14 held at the American University in Washington, D.C. The four-man team, comprised of ACSC students Maj. Christopher Baker, Maj. Christopher Phillips, Maj. Benjamin Youngquist and Maj. George Sconyers III, competed against 20 schools including Harvard, Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, National Defense University and Arizona State. According to Atlantic Council, a think tank in the field of international affairs, the Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge is the only student competition devoted to high-level policy recommendations for day-after responses to a major cyber incident. It is designed to offer students, across a wide range of academic disciplines, a better understanding of the policy challenges associated with cyber conflict. "We did well," said Sconyers. "We had a bunch of people who had positive things to say about us, but we certainly made mistakes. The feedback we were given indicated that we undervalued the capabilities of industry, according to the judges, and overvalued the need for military involvement. There were some learning points that were good and interesting." For the competition, schools were given a scenario involving a dispute between two countries, which led into a series of cyberattacks. After deliberate consideration, the teams presented their solutions to a panel of judges - experts in government, finance, telecom and the press - who acted as the National Security Council. "As a cyber-operator, this was of great interest to me," Sconyers said. "The opportunity for a military member to think on a national strategic level on how the country would move on from a cyberattack and then figuring out how to respond to that in the face of Congress and the American public screaming for some sort of action was great. I enjoyed it; I would go back and do it again." The Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge is open to all graduate and undergraduate students from the United States and international universities and military and defense colleges. In association with the Geneva Center for Security Policy, the Europe Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge is scheduled to take place April 22 - 23 at the Centre International de Conferences Geneve in Geneva, Switzerland.