The winners of this year's Fortinet Ultimate Fabric Challenge Global Championship were announced at our annual customer and partner conference, Accelerate 2023. The Ultimate Fabric Challenge is a series of regional cybersecurity skills-based competitions that occur during Fortinet XPERTS Summit conferences around the world over the course of each year. At Accelerate, the winners from each of these regional partner challenges face off at the Global Championship.

This year, 40 contestants from around the world tested their skills by configuring multiple Fortinet products that make up the Security Fabric of a virtual enterprise. Contestants receive points for each achievement and the people who solve problems the most quickly get the most points. The products that the contestants need to be familiar with span the entire Fortinet product line, including FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls, SD-WAN, FortiAnalyzer, FortiManager, FortiSwitch, FortiSASE, FortiClient, and more. This year, contestants were faced with a new virtual setting: a state-of-the-art fully-automated manufacturing plant. They also had to know how to configure some of the latest Fortinet features, such as providing secure private access with FortiSASE to remote users. For the first time this year, the security environment had a strong focus on securing access to operational technology (OT) in the factory.

The challenge requires knowledge and skill, and sometimes even a bit of luck. Even more than that, it takes focus and concentration over the course of three solid hours. The UFC leverages curriculum from the award-winning Fortinet Training Institute, which is composed of various programs including the NSE Certification program, focused on closing the cybersecurity skills gap.

Competition Details

In an amazing come-from-behind story, our third-place winner started off in the middle of the pack, and over the course of three grueling hours overtook competitor after competitor, gradually rising in the ranks, finally ending up with the bronze medal and$2,500. Our third-place winner Manuel Carrasco is an NSE level 7 certified Business Development Manager from Viva Solutions based in Panama City, Panama.

The second-place winner stayed strong all the way through the competition, never falling out of the top five and staying in the top two almost the whole way. Even within the last few minutes, the placement between first and second was changing hands back and forth, and she ended up taking the silver medal and the$5,000 prize. Our second-place winner Sarah Ryba, is an NSE level 7 certified Network Engineer from Liquid Networx in San Antonio, Texas.

Like Sarah, our gold medal winner stayed in the top two or three for nearly the entire contest, maintaining concentration and focus over the entire three hours. But in the end, Andryan Viryadi, an NSE level 7 certified Solutions Architect from Packet Systems based in Jakarta, Indonesia came in first place, capturing the top spot in the Global Championship. In addition to bragging rights, Andryan received a first-place gold medal and$10,000.

A big thank you to all the contestants and hearty congratulations to the winners!

Fortinet XPERTS Summits 2023

Join us at the upcoming Fortinet XPERTS Summits 2023 and participate in the qualifying rounds, for a chance to join next year's Global Championship at Accelerate 2024. Visit the Fortinet XPERTS website for more information about your region.

Learn more about the Ultimate Fabric Challenge and the Fortinet free cybersecurity training initiative and Fortinet's Training Institute, including the NSE Certification program, Academic Partner program, and Education Outreach program which includes a focus on Veterans.