Huskies Competing in the CCDC

Sure, you know that the Huskies are competing in the NCAA tournament, but once again they are also competing in the Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition as well.

The Grey Hat group, a collection of Institute of Technology Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Information Technology Systems students interested in cybersecurity, data integrity and information assurance, will be competing this weekend against other student teams of eight from a selection of universities and colleges from the Pacific Northwest. This includes Alaska, Idaho and Victoria University of Wellington.

Coached by Don McLane, the UWT team will not be crashing the boards but keeping others from crashing their servers. Dr. Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, Director Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, will once again be on hand to cheer on the Purple and Gold (and everyone else competing, no doubt). Last year, the "evil red team" had a few of the alumni of the Grey Hats working for them, making it an especially difficult foe.

Some of the preparations for the event include a group of exercises put together by The UW Tacoma group, the Grey Hats, partially to prepare for the CCDC, and partly as a general Information Assurance introduction.

The winners of this regional competition will compete in the nationals with travel and lodging expenses paid.

Held previously at Fort Lewis and last year at the Microsoft Corporate Campus, this year's event will take place on the campus of Highline Community College.

Taken from the CCDC website:

In this competition, student teams are presented with a pre-configured systems of a fictitious company that they are tasked to operate. The evil red team, which sits next door, however, will attempt to vandalize and break into this network. The student teams need to defend against the attacks of this red team. In particular, the goals for each team are to:

- fulfill assigned business tasks (so-called injects)
- keep services operational
- prevent break-ins by the red team

Students are scored based on the goals above. The team with the most points of the two day event will be the winner of the 3rd Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition and will proceed to the National competition.


Our objectives for this event are:
- Build a meaningful mechanism by which institutions of higher education may evaluate their programs.
- Provide an educational venue in which students are able to apply the theory and practical skills they have learned in their course work;
- Foster a spirit of teamwork, ethical behavior, and effective communication both within and across teams;
- Create interest and awareness among participating institutions and students.

Mission:

The Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) provides institutions with an information assurance or computer security curriculum a controlled competitive environment to assess their student’s depth of understanding and operational competency in managing the challenges inherent in protecting an enterprise network infrastructure and business information systems.

The Organizing Committee are:

Barbara Endicott-Popovsky – CIAC Chair
Don McLane – UWIT Tacoma
Corrinne Sande — Whatcom Community College
Brian Hay – University of Alaska
Bob Bunge – DeVry University
Christian Seifert – Victoria University of Wellington, NZ
Michelle Moore – Microsoft
Mike Acker - ISSA
Rick Davidson - University of Washington
Brady Bloxham - Idaho State University
Dwayne Williams – National CCDC Advisor

Check out this documentary about the first year of the event.

Go Dawgs!!