A former Kingsbridge Community College student represented the UK at the European Cyber Security Challenge, finishing fifth overall.

Sophia McCall was selected as part of the 12 person team to travel to Malaga, Spain for a full day of competitive ethical hacking challenges.

Towards the end of the day, the 19 year old was selected to represent her team as each country had to chose one representative to deliver a presentation on their behalf.

Sophia excelled at this, with her presentation on hardware hacking almost scoring maximum marks and finishing with the highest score out of all the fifteen countries entered. This helped their overall team finish in fifth position.

“It really was an amazing experience thanks to Cyber Security Challenge UK! Definitely was a week to remember”, said Sophia.

The European Cyber Security Challenge is an annual event supported by the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security. The aim of this is to discover young and emerging cyber security talent across Europe.

To qualify for this event, Sophia had to go through a face-to-face qualification process in a UK wide search to find the UK’s best amateur cyber security talent.

All team members had to take part in the Roke Face-to-Face in July where they competed against dozens of other contestants to secure their places. Ever since selection, the team have trained hard, all supported by Team Coach, Tim from BAE Systems.

Currently, Sophia is studying cyber security management at Bournemouth University and she is a student ambassador for Cyber Security Challenge UK. For this she travels around the country to different universities and events to promote the importance of cyber security and scout for talented young ethical hackers.

She has trained herself in digital forensics and penetration testing and to gain more experience, she attended insight camps, ‘Capture the Flag’ competitions and took part in numerous Cyber Security competitions.

Before university, Sophia attended Kingsbridge Community College between 2012 and 2014 where she studied under Rob Courtice who helped her prepare for a GCSE in computer science. After this, she went to South Devon College in Paignton to study for a level 3 BTEC in software development.

Sophia was the only girl in the team which she hopes will encourage more girls to get involved in computer science and IT.

The Cyber Security Challenge Team UK is made up of ten participants with the junior team consisting of ethical hackers aged 14-20 and the senior team including competitors aged 21-25.

The fifteen teams competing this year include Austria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Norway, Romania, Spain, Switzerland and, of course, the UK.

Spain finished in first position, narrowly beating Romania who came in second. In an exciting pursuit against Austria, the German team was able to claim third place.

The European Challenge has been developed in response to the growing popularity of cyber security challenges across the continent, which have proven to be a great source of talent for companies across the cyber security landscape. Additionally, the challenges have led to contestants being recruited by a diverse collection of employers.

Sophia would like to say a huge thank you to Cyber Security Challenge UK who helped fund the teams trip to Spain and helped with the training in Cheltenham.