You have just been hired as the network and security administrators at a small company and will be taking administrative control of all information systems. You know very little about the network, what security level has been maintained, or what software has been installed. You have a limited time frame to familiarize yourself with the network and systems and to begin the security updates and patches before the red team starts actively attacking your company. In the midst of all the commotion, you have to keep up with the needs of the business and user demands while maintaining service level agreements for all critical Internet services. Welcome to the first day of the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC).
CCDC is a three day event kicking off today. It focuses on keeping an existing network infrastructure that you “inherit” operational. Your job is to keep things secured while resisting hacks from competition officials.
It sounds like a very different kind of competition (and it also sounds fun!) and it has its own interesting rules and scoring procedures. To make the competition happen, it takes a powerful set of sponsors to help pull it off.
Participants in this year’s competition include:
University of Washington
Cal Ply Pomona
University of Wyoming
Texas A&M
University of Alaska – Fairbanks
St. Cloud State University
Rochester Institute of Technology
Towson University
UNC Charlotte
US Air Force Academy
You can watch the 2012 standings to see how the various schools do through this weekend’s competition.
Good luck to all participants!