The St. Cloud State cyber defense team earn first place at the Minnesota Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition Feb. 9 and advances to the Midwest regional March 15-16 in Illinois.
St. Cloud State was one of 10 Minnesota State system schools participating in the competition.
With the win, the team advances to the Midwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition March 15-16 in Illinois.
The Metropolitan State University team took second in the competition and advanced to the wild card competition held March 2, where the team again took second and is also advancing to the regional competition at Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois.
Winners of the regional competition advance to the National Championship April 23-25.
The Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition is a chance for students to assess their depth of understanding and operational competency in managing the challenges inherent in protecting a corporate network infrastructure and business information system.
Team Members
- Kevin Clark, team captain
- Shad Brown
- Ben Jasko
- Micah Kryzer
- Joseph Route
- Paul Runnoe
- Andrew Schweitzer
- Paul Voeltz
- Ryan Wagner
- Samual Derosier
- Ben Fehringer
- Brett Karow
- Samuel Espana, Faculty advisor
In a controlled virtual environment, competitors assume administrative and protective duties for an existing commercial network — that typically includes a small company with about 50 employees, seven to 10 servers and common internet services including web, mail and an e-commerce website.
Each team has an identical set of hardware and software and is scored on the ability to detect and respond to outside threats, maintain availability of existing services, respond to business requests and balance security needs against business needs.
An automated scouring engine is used to verify the functionally and availability of each team’s services on a periodic basis and traffic generators continuously feed simulated traffic into the competition network.
A volunteer red team provides an external threat that all internet-based services face and allows the teams to match their defensive skills against live opponents.
The Minnesota State competition was hosted by the Minnesota State IT Center of Excellence, one of eight Minnesota State Centers of Excellence.
Participating Teams
Alexandria Technical and Community College
Anoka Technical College
Century College
Lake Superior College
Minneapolis Community and Technical College
Metropolitan State University, Second Place
Minnesota State Community and Technical College with MN State U, Moorhead
Minnesota State University, Mankato
Pine Technical and Community College, Third Place
St. Cloud State University, First Place
