Cyber Warriors Take First Place at State Competition

Indiana Tech’s cyber defense team, the Cyber Warriors, won the state Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on Saturday February 7^th, competing against universities from around Indiana. The Cyber Warriors now move on to the Midwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC), to be held March 27-28 at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills IL.  The Midwest Regional will feature universities from Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin, and will determine the Midwest team that will compete in the National CCDC in April in San Antonio, TX.

Members of Indiana Tech’s state championship team include Turner England (Captain), Michael Contino, Eliott Stidd, Carson White, Matt Kowal, Tyler Schmidtke and Ian Springer. Julie Mansfield, Associate Professor of Computer Sciences, and Bill Copeland, Adjunct Professor of Computer Sciences, serve as faculty advisors for the Cyber Warriors.

Each team’s goal during the CCDC is to create, manage and protect a network infrastructure. Teams build a mock production business infrastructure and then must defend it from professional hackers who are given the challenge to take down each team’s system and breach their security. While the teams work to fend off the hackers, the competition’s judging staff deploys network enhancement and upgrade challenges to each team, judging and scoring each team’s performance. Additionally, teams are required to professionally document their responses to the security threats and discuss the techniques they use to defend against them.