University of Central Florida Are Three-peat Champions Of College Cyber Defense Competition

cyber defense University of Central Florida Brigham Young University

By Elizabeth Anderson , Parent Herald May 02, 04:56 am

The University of Central Florida (UCF) has done it for three straight years. The UCF team is the 2016 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition champions. The competition has been going on for eleven years now.

"Teamwork and communication are extremely important for CCDC. It is stressful handling business tasks, keeping services up, Red Team attacks, hardening networks and clients, and performing incident response," said Heather Lawrence, as per USA Today. Lawrence is a graduate student on the UCF team.

@UCF becomes winningest National Collegiate Cyber Defense champion https://t.co/g95BrkygC7 @CindyBarthOBJ pic.twitter.com/vW6Kx8p2XZ

— OrlandoBizJournal (@OBJUpdate) April 25, 2016

University Of Central Florida Prevailed Over 179 Others

The UCF team received the NCCDC Alamo Cup. They will also go on a trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with the nation's leading research and national security cyber experts, make site tours and visit the White House later this year.

The UCF Team came on top out of more than 180 institutions across America. The last 10 teams standing slugged it out in the finals, which was held from April 22-24 in San Antonio. They had to "protect a simulated network against an onslaught of consistent and increasingly challenging cyber attacks," Cyber Security Business reported. Brigham Young University placed second.

NCCDC Champions Will Also Get Internships Or Job Offers

WESH Orlando reported that during the finals, the teams managed a computer network and fended off cyber attacks that were based on what happens in the real-world. The NCCDC was sponsored by Raytheon for the third time. The winners usually get internships or job offers from the company, WESH Orlando added.

"It's an exciting event because it puts the students into real-world IT cyber-security scenarios where there's a real, live red team of 'hackers' ... volunteers that we have from some of the best of the best across the country," Jack Harrington said via USA today. Harrington is the vice president of cyber business at Raytheon.

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