Sarah Ogden, a sophomore at Northern Kentucky University, is just one of 12 women selected for the first U.S. women’s cyber team.

Jessica Gulick, U.S. Cyber ​​Games Commissioner, said the U.S. Cyber ​​Games team has worked with individuals around the world over the past three years and found the lack of women on teams to be a shared challenge and opportunity.

“Working with Japan, the UK and Europe, we collectively agreed that by putting together a women’s teams program, we can focus our energy on getting more women into cybergames and generate enough energy globally to inspire and raise awareness among women about the various teams available,” Gulick said.

Ogden said she has been interested in math since she was a child, which led her to attend coding/computer science camps. In high school, she attended the Delaware Area Career Center in Delaware, Ohio, for cybersecurity.

At the career center, Ogden said, she was able to participate in various capture-the-flag challenges, which are cybersecurity competitions that test participants’ skills by requiring them to find vulnerabilities in a system to gain access to information.

Ogden then decided to pursue her passion for cybersecurity at NKU. She chose NKU because its computer science department has a robust cybersecurity program and offers the opportunity to complete a double major. Ogden completed a double major in cybersecurity and data science and will graduate in 2027.

Maureen Doyle, a professor in NKU’s School of Computer Science and Analytics, taught Ogden during her first year at the university. Doyle said Ogden was impressive from the start.

Doyle said Ogden came to her office hours to introduce herself and ask about the university’s women’s cybersecurity group. At the time, the group had been without leadership for about a year. Ogden contacted the academic advisor and is now president of NKU’s women’s cybersecurity group.

“I’m impressed by her curiosity,” Doyle said. “She loves forensics. I think she’s a puzzle person. And when I say ‘that’s available,’ she just goes with it. I think even the reason she’s on this team is because she just took the initiative. She’s just a curious person, she tries things out and takes advantage of the opportunities that come her way.”

Ogden is also a threat operations intern at Kroger Technology & Digital. While it’s not unheard of, Doyle said it’s rare for Ogden to land an internship after only one year of school.

Earlier this year, Ogden attended the Women in Cybersecurity conference (also known as WiCys) and competed in cybersecurity capture-the-flag competitions. She spoke with coaches from colleges across the country and said one of them recommended she try out for the U.S. women’s cyber team.

“I had never heard of the US Cyber ​​Games before, so I thought, ‘Sure, why not?'” Ogden said. “I was really shocked when I got the interview invitation and even more shocked when I was accepted onto the team.”

The US Cyber ​​Games features a Capture the Flag event that is open to all citizens of the country. According to Ogden, around 5,000 people took part in it this year. Afterwards, the candidates with the highest scores were selected for a team interview.

Gulick said they had about 55 applicants and conducted about 35 interviews to select 12 players. Ogden said she will stay on the team for a year and then have to audition again.

The competition consists of several sections. Ogden said she did well in forensics, which involves analyzing digital evidence to identify cybercrime and the perpetrator.

“One of the things they’re looking for is people who do well in each individual category and not just overall because they want a team with diverse talent,” Ogden said.

Doyle said Ogden is talented and her combination of degrees alone shows how versatile she is. In addition to her inclusion on the U.S. Women’s Cyber ​​Team, Ogden’s degrees showcase her skills in math, statistics, data science, programming, cybersecurity, forensics and defense, according to Doyle.

“She just wrote her ticket to her dream job,” Doyle said.

Ogden specializes in forensics and offense/defense on the U.S. women’s cyber team. Gulick used a football analogy to describe the different specializations – not everyone on the team can be a wide receiver or a quarterback. The team has women who specialize in reverse engineering, forensics, crypto and more.

Gulick said that while education and certifications are great, players have told her that they learned more in a few weeks of playing and immersing themselves in the environment than they did in two years of school.

“They’re building a network of people who value curiosity, experimentation and learning, and because of that they can accelerate learning even further,” she said. “It’s that practical value that you can’t necessarily read from a book.”

The U.S. women’s cyber team is not a “B team,” Gulick said.

“There are no women who won’t make it through the program,” she said. “There’s no reason for gender segregation in cybersecurity. We’re simply doing it because we want to focus on attracting more women to cybersecurity teams and careers in the field.”

Part of the interview process for the team was asking each candidate if they were willing and able to serve as a role model. Gulick said part of being on the women’s team is to attract more women to the field.

“Cyberattacks are very much about human behavior, so it’s important that the team protecting your networks is diverse because the attackers on your networks are equally diverse,” Gulick said.

A job in cybersecurity has many benefits, Gulick says. The field typically offers high salaries, the task of protecting networks and digital identities, flexible hours, remote work, the opportunity to work in a team and more.

According to ISC2.org, a nonprofit organization specializing in training and certifying cybersecurity professionals, the cybersecurity industry is approximately 20-25% female.

“If there’s a field, be it nursing, that tends to attract only women, or computer science, which attracts men, you’re missing out on a whole half of the population,” Doyle said.

Ogden said the team’s goal is to serve as a role model for other women interested in STEM and show them that they, too, can do this work.

The U.S. Women’s Cyber ​​Team will travel to Tokyo, Japan in November to compete in a special women’s cyber game exhibition, the Kunoichi Cyber ​​Games, at the 2024 Code Blue Conference.

Games like the Kunoichi Cyber ​​Games typically consist of capture the flag, which tests skills in triage, the ability to decide which challenges to accept, forensics, web security, cryptography, reverse engineering and binary quoting. Gulick said they also typically run a game called attack and defense, which is essentially about protecting your own server while attacking your competitor’s server.

The team will select five players for the first team, although Gulick said they are trying to take most of the team’s players to Tokyo as ambassadors. Ogden said she does not yet know if she will be on the first team.

After graduation, Ogden plans to work as a security engineer or security analyst with a focus on big data, which is large, difficult-to-manage data sets.

Doyle said Ogden is an example of how to go for it and not be afraid. She said college is the time to explore and take risks.

“I’m just so proud of Sarah,” Doyle said. “I think all of us at NKU are so fortunate that she’s able to have this experience because she’s on a national team. This is a once in a lifetime experience that she’s only able to have because she took the initiative.”

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