The National CIRCUS (Collegiate Incident Response Competition for Undergraduate Students) is a new National cybersecurity competition focusing on best practices and procedures for conducting digital forensics and incident response.
Teams receive a client scenario and forensic artifacts from a compromised environment. Their job is to determine what happened, document how it happened, and communicate clear recommendations to corporate management. The teams are scored on the completeness of their reports, professionalism, recommendations, and presentations.
CIRCUS emphasizes not just technical analysis, but also evidence handling, chain of custody, and clear communication with legal, executive, and non-technical stakeholders.
The Finals held at SCALE 23x will consist of 2yr and 4yr colleges and universities that will be “deposed” by their client’s legal counsel (The Judges) and provide a presentation of their findings along with a intense Q&A from the legal counsel of the affected client.
These presentations are intense, focused, and test the student’s technical memory, accuracy, and poise. Each team is allotted 30 minutes for their presentation and Q&A lasts for 15-20 minutes afterwards.
Judges are recruited from cybersecurity professional organizations, law firms, and law enforcement organizations who handle these types of cases on a daily basis.
