SCSU takes first in Minnesota Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition

The St. Cloud State University team takes first at the Minnesota Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.

The St. Cloud State University team took home first place honors at the 2020 Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) Feb. 8 at Alexandria Technical and Community College. 

The team is automatically qualified for the Midwest Regional CCDC March 28-29. 

All the members of the St. Cloud State team are majoring in cybersecurity. To prepare for competitions, the meets twice a week in the Headley Hall Computer Networking Lab. To prepare for the regional, they’ll begin meeting three times a week, Dr. Akalanka Mailewa, the team’s adviser. 

“We have a really hard working group of individuals and this is because of all the team members’ great dedication to seek the final goal, plus great team management,” Mailewa said. 

In the competition, student teams compete against a Red Team of professionals who try to hack and infiltrate student networks. When they aren’t infiltrating competition networks, Red Team professionals interact with the student teams and invite them to visit their sites for behind-the-scenes looks at how real-world security works. 

St. Cloud State was followed by Pine Technical College in second place and Century College in third place. Eleven teams from Minnesota State colleges and universities participated in the competition. 

The competition is put on by the Minnesota State system and the Minnesota State system IT Center of Excellence.