Software Engineering Institute

For four years, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA’s) President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition has identified the federal government’s best cyber professionals and teams. In 2022, the SEI once again developed challenges for the event and orchestrated it in partnership with CISA, this time adding a new multiplayer video game called Cubespace and making it available after the event.

Cubespace uses an immersive science-fiction story to present highly realistic cybersecurity simulations for a variety of cyber work roles such as cyber defense, incident response, and software developer. “We build the challenges to reflect real-world situations,” said the CISA President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition lead, Michael Harpin. “The video game is a fun and unique addition to the President’s Cup.”

The fourth competition saw more than 1,200 participants from the Department of Defense and other federal agencies. Since then the event has offered its training to more cyber professionals than ever. Federal employees can now hone their cyber skills with nearly 200 challenges from the past President’s Cups in an online Practice Area.

Cubespace’s source code is freely available at github.com/cisagov/prescup-challenges.