Vincent Hutsebaut, NCI Agency Senior Cyber Security Engineer, won the SANS NetWars tournament of champions that took place in Washington DC. After a fierce competition which lasted two nights from 17 to 18 December 2016, Vincent took the top prize, receiving a trophy from US Colonel Donald Bray, former Commander of the Cyber Protection Brigade.
SANS NetWars is a suite of hands-on, interactive learning scenarios that enable information security professionals to develop and master the real-world, in-depth skills they need to excel in their field. In 2016, SANS organized 20 Netwars Hacking competitions that gathered a total of 1920 competitors. As many as 85 (out of 260 people invited) top scorers attended the final tournament of champions. Vincent was one of them. He took this challenge as part of his 2016 annual training and personal development plan.
"I am thrilled to have won this international competition," he said.
"It was a challenging contest, enabling each participant to enhance their technical skills. I would definitely recommend everyone to take on this challenge as a great learning opportunity. I would like to thank my management for their support in enabling me to participate to the NetWars tournament of champions."
Vincent Hutsebaut works as a senior security engineer in the Capability Development Branch of the Cyber Security Service line based in Mons, Belgium. Vincent is particularly involved in the security testing of NATO CIS and works hard to ensure that all the vulnerabilities are found (and fixed) before a system is deployed.
By winning this highly challenging competition already for the third time (Vincent participated at three out of five editions), he confirmed the excellence of his technical skills and proved right Aristotle's famous saying: 'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit'.