I think that, overall, this was a tremendous opportunity for the students. If this were to be implemented in the future, I have some project thoughts. First, there should be more upfront loading/onboarding with the students. Students (like employees) need to understand their roles, the process and most importantly, how to process and work as a team. Therefore, teambuilding and leadership activities should be focused on upfront. A good chunk of time (10%) should just be on this. Also at this time, the instructors role as facilitator should be discussed and agreed upon as well. Second, I think that the planning and clear delineation of the project, as clearly as possible, should be done for the students. Students should have a clear and precise understanding of the tools, timeline milestones and final expectations of them and their project. Of course, obstacles and adjustments can arise, but without CLEAR expectations, students will struggle needlessly--there will still be plenty of challenges that will arise even with clearly articulated expectations. This must include the technical expectations as well. Third, students working on the project. Students should use their instructor for assistance with the technologies being implemented, with the instructor being a facilitator. However, students should also stay in touch with their employers with any clarifications and questions as they arise, as well as getting meaningful project feedback. This part should take the greatest amount of time. Finally, the last stage of the project should be perhaps no more than 15% of the time, the pen testing/network analysis portion and summary of vulnerabilities/misconfigurations. Students should be able to gather data, explain the results, and deliver a clear presentation of their analysis to the employers. In conclusion, love the employers. eBacon and Nationwide were wonderful to work with and great to the kids. But we need better planning upfront and clearer expectations to make this a smoother and more rewarding process in the future. We all appreciate this opportunity that ElevateAZ gave to our school and our students!

PenTesting Competition’s Network & Security Challenge 2 was fun, and the students learned a lot. It was stressful for them too, but they recognized how much they learned.

Lack of communication with my team