Congratulations to our 2024 winners!
- 1st Place: Sam Richman
- 2nd Place: Retired Maj. Jonathan Harbin, USA
- 3rd Place: Retired U.S. Navy Capt. George Galdorisi
The winners will receive engraved awards and monetary prizes and will be recognized during an awards ceremony at AFCEA International’s TechNet Cyber conference, June 25-27 in Baltimore. All three winning articles will be published in SIGNAL Magazine’s July 2024 issue as part of The Cyber Edge special section.
The Cyber Edge is SIGNAL Media's home for the expanding world of cyber technologies. The Cyber Edge highlights threats and solutions built around interviews with key government/military and cyber leaders. Read the Cyber Edge at any time online; quarterly in the print edition of SIGNAL Magazine and monthly in the Cyber Edge newsletter.
To encourage individual thought leaders to share their knowledge with the AFCEA audience, each year, SIGNAL produces The Cyber Edge Writing Award. Writers address a unique theme and the top three submissions receive cash prizes and accolades. A panel of industry experts selects the winners.
Your ideas can change how nations secure the cyber domain. AFCEA’s The Cyber Edge Writing Award offers writers of all stripes a chance to win money AND play a pivotal role in securing the cyber domain.
2024 Theme: Mitigating Cyber Threats Today and into the Future
The threat of cyberattacks are constant and the ability to identify and mitigate the threat is a 24-hour challenge by government, industry and academia. For this year’s challenge, we seek original thoughts or a case study on how to mitigate identified threats, which could include such challenges as:
- Social Engineering
- Third-Party Exposure
- Configuration Mistakes
- Poor Cyber Hygiene
- Cloud Vulnerabilities
- Mobile Device Vulnerabilities
- Internet of Things
- Ransomware
Approach
- Explain the threat.
- Describe a solution and how it could (or is) alleviating current dangers.
- Report on activities that are either possible, necessary or already underway to implement the technology, program or concept.
Award Details
- Word count should be between 1,200 and 1,600.
- Use a news writing style with the most important information in the first paragraph and direct attributions in the article where needed.
- Do not use footnotes/references. Only submit original writing.
- The article must not have been submitted elsewhere or have been previously published in any format either in print or online.
- Contest entries will be judged on content originality, alignment with the focus, writing quality and guideline adherence.
Deadline
Submission deadline was February 5, 2024.
Prizes
The top three authors will each receive a monetary prize and have their articles published by SIGNAL Media.
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1st place — $5,000
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2nd place — $2,000
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3rd place — $1,000
Eligibility
Open to industry, academia, government and military at all levels and locations. Employees of AFCEA and their immediate families, or employees of the contest sponsor, are not eligible. Only one submission per individual name, regardless of author or co-author status. An author can include co-authors when submitting; however, regardless of the number of co-authors, only one prize will be paid, as shown above, per winning submission.
Past Writing award Winners
