The University of Central Florida, recently designated by the U.S. Department of Education as a Hispanic Serving Institution, was among the top three winners at the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. The event, which was held in an entirely virtual setting for the first time in its 15-year history, is sponsored by Raytheon Intelligence and Space, a Raytheon Technologies business.
More than 240 colleges and universities competed, with ten finalists emerging from the regional competitions and moved on to the championship. The National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition was the first to test cyber defense skills in a collegiate competition modeled after real-world business scenarios.
Tom Nedorost, who serves as a coach to the cybersecurity club, Hack@UCF, said he couldn’t be prouder. “This is an amazing achievement and a testament to the long hours of practice the students put into preparing for this competition, ” he said in a statement. “Considering that UCF does not yet offer a cybersecurity degree, the team’s top finish is even more impressive.”
Seeing the practical applications of cyber defense skills encourages more students to pursue cybersecurity careers, Raytheon said in a statement announcing how students protected a fictional automotive parts corporation against cyber-attacks in the midst of a global pandemic.
Hosted by the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security at the University of Texas-San Antonio, the competition is usually held in April. However, due to COVID-19, this year’s event was postponed to May 22-23, allowing the organizers time to reengineer the competition as a virtual event with student teams all competing remotely from their homes.
The National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition had a twist to the challenge this year: There was a dedicated team of white hat hackers intent on disrupting the competitor’s systems and a looming global pandemic causing the teams to shelter-in-place.
According to Raytheon, the collegiate competitors were tasked to manage the company’s “home office” as well as cloud and remote systems all while protecting intellectual property, customer data, and employee records. The competing teams were then required to design and build a remote infrastructure to support critical services in case their primary network went down.
The University of Virginia was the top finish securing the coveted Alamo Cup. In second place was the University of Central Florida, and Stanford University placed third. The top 10 finalist schools that competed in NCCDC and won their respective regional competitions as follows:
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