§665m President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition

Summary

The Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency may hold a yearly event called the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition to find and reward the federal government’s top cybersecurity workers and teams in both offensive and defensive skills. Federal civilian employees and members of the uniformed services (as defined in 5 U.S.C. 2101(3)) can enter if they follow the Director’s rules. The Director can hire outside groups or governments to run the event. The competition will use skills from the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education Framework, include individual and team contests, and cover offensive and defensive categories such as reverse engineering, exploitation, network operations, forensics, big data analysis, secure and obfuscated coding, and cyber-physical systems, plus any other related activities the Director adds. Money set aside for the competition may pay for promotion, necessary meals, promotional items, honorary recognition (consistent with 5 U.S.C. 4503), and awards. This applies to funds made available on or after December 23, 2022. The Director may give awards of up to $10,000 each, and the Secretary of Homeland Security may give awards up to $25,000 each; awards are extra to regular pay and total awards in a fiscal year cannot exceed $100,000. Each year the Director must report to the House and Senate homeland security committees on available funds, spending, who participated, and lessons learned to help improve CISA’s operations and hiring.