General Dynamics’ IT Business Holds 3rd Annual Cyber Hackathon

General Dynamics’ information technology business held its third annual Cyber Hackathon on July 11 and 12 sponsored by Amazon Web Services and Splunk.

This year’s collaborative training exercise, led by GDIT’s Cyber, Cloud and Data & Analytics Communities of Interest, focused on the use of artificial intelligence and machine-learning in the cyber domain, GDIT said Tuesday.

The two-day event saw 11 teams set up and secure their own AWS cloud infrastructure, which they will populate with large data sets to be analyzed using automated platforms such as Sputnik’s analysis tools or AWS’ QuickSight, SageMaker, Athena and Amazon Machine Learning.

The teams received points from technical judges based on the successful completion of tasks but also had to fend off attacks from a “Red Team,” which simulated real cyber attacks faced by GDIT and its clients.

The Hackathon saw participants with varying skill levels from across the company including legacy CSRA units as well as Praxis, GCI, SC3 and more.

GDIT Cyber Director Matt McFadden said that this year’s Hackathon was designed to “build community, develop AI and cyber skills and deepen alliances.”