For the second straight year, a team of Northrop Grumman [NOC] engineers has won the “grand champion” title in the Defense Cyber Crime Center’s (DC3) annual Digital Forensics Challenge, the company said on Dec. 9.
In addition to earning grand champion, Northrop Grumman said its team also took first prize in the United States and commercial categories.
“We are very proud of our world class team of cyber professionals who have proven the importance of rapid innovation to address the very changing cyber threat,” Jim Myers, vice president and general manager of the Cyber Solutions division within the Northrop Grumman Information Systems segment, said in a statement. “This competition validates the breadth and depth of talent we have at Northrop Grumman and reconfirms our continued commitment to cyber workforce development.”
The eighth annual Digital Forensics Challenge lasted more than 10 months and included 1,254 teams from 49 U.S. states and 49 countries. The challenge consisted of 41 individual scenario-based exercises organized into five levels of difficulty with teams free to choose what exercises to work on and submit for grading.
Of the top five teams competing for grand champion, Northrop Grumman was the only company and was followed by three civilian teams and one graduate team.
DC3 is a Pentagon agency that sets standards for digital evidence processing and analysis for DoD investigations and also assists in defense criminal, counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism and fraud investigations.