Mary Ann Hopkins: Parsons Hosts NSA’s Cyber Defense Training Exercise

Parsons has helped to kick off National Security Agency-run cyber defense exercise that runs between April 13 and April 17 to help train students on secure network operations.

At least 100 students from the U.S. service academies and the Royal Military College of Canada are participating in the event at Parsons’ Columbia, Md.-based cyber center, Parsons said Tuesday.

Mary Ann Hopkins, Parsons group president and an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 list for 2015, said the annual exercise is intended to help “young minds to protect confidential data and other sensitive information.”

A team of network specialists is tasked to launch an attack against computer networks developed by the students at their respective schools as part of the challenge and the participants will work to defend the networks.

Parsons conducts the exercise on a virtual private network in order to prevent interference with real-world networks.