VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – A unique pair of cybersecurity professionals has traveled from North Carolina to Virginia Beach. They came for Cyber Shield 2025, an annual cybersecurity training event that hosts participants from multiple states’ National Guard, state partners from various countries, and civilians working together to train to defend the cyber front.
Maj. Christopher Roys, Deputy Team Chief with the Cyber Security Response Force at Joint Force Headquarters, North Carolina National Guard, has attended Cyber Shield multiple times. His son, Nicholas Roys, is attending Cyber Shield for the first time.
Nick works with his father at the CSRF and jumped at the opportunity to attend Cyber Shield as a civilian cybersecurity professional.
Set to run from May 30 to June 13, 2025, Cyber Shield is the largest and longest-running Department of Defense cyber exercise. The mission of Cyber Shield is to develop, train, and exercise cyber forces in areas such as computer network defense and cyber incident response. It is recognized as the nation’s premier unclassified cyber training exercise, designed to protect critical networks and enhance cyber capabilities.
In the previous year, Chris had told his son about Cyber Shield and the value of the training, saying that he knew the event would be something his son would enjoy. At the time, he couldn't have imagined the “stars aligning” to make it happen.
Chris said he wants all three of his sons to do what they love, but he admits to hinting strongly that Nick might be interested in cybersecurity. For a while, Nick’s response was, “Okay, Dad.” He wasn’t sure yet which career path to choose.
While attending the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Nick chose to study information technology (IT), which he enjoyed. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems with a minor in Cybersecurity in 2023. He had worked in IT at a local company when an opportunity opened up to work at the CSRF with his father. He knew it would provide opportunities for experience and growth. Nick landed the job just months ago.
Chris worked to get his son invited to Cyber Shield as soon as the opportunity arose.
"I was telling all that to him last year, and then to have him actually here? It's almost like a dream come true,” said Chris. “From a father's [perspective], obviously it's fantastic, you know, to be able to work with your son to do something like this and even have him on your team.”
Nick feels the same way.
“It’s cool,” said Nick. “You know, I never thought I'd be working with my dad at something like this.”
Cyber Shield represents the “Super Bowl” of training events, says Chris. For Nick, it represents an experience that he says he never would have gotten outside of the “real deal,” and he is excited to learn everything he can.
Split into teams, some focus on simulating cyber attacks and dismantling systems, allowing other teams to train in defending against these attacks and protecting critical systems. Many people may think of cyberattacks as only within the information space, but this year’s simulated scenario puts municipalities and public services in danger. The possibility of this scenario in the real world demonstrates the importance of the Cyber Shield exercise.
“This is a good example of what we would put into place if one of our state partners had a cyber incident and we came on board to do an incident response for them,” says Chris. “So, it's a practice for us, for all the policies and procedures and the types of challenges that we would face; not only from a technical standpoint, but from a legal and policy standpoint and working with our state partner.”
Chris says the knowledge that professionals enter the event with versus the knowledge they leave with is like “night and day,” and he is thankful his son has the chance to get that experience, too.
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