The School of Information Studies hosted the Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition this Friday through Sunday, bringing together possible recruits for cybersecurity companies.

Student teams from 10 schools across the Northeast participated in the weekend-long event. Some of the schools represented included the University of Maine and the University of Massachusetts at Boston, as well as a team from Syracuse University.

Rochester Institute of Technology won this year’s competition, according to NECCDC’s website.

“The whole concept is to produce the next generation of cybersecurity professionals,” Bahram Attaie said. Attaie organized and directed this year’s competition at the iSchool. He said recruiters were present throughout the weekend in search of the next generation of IT professionals.

“There’s a huge shortage and demand is high, and this competition produces exactly the type of recruits that these companies are looking for,” Attaie said.

Attaie said one aspect of this event that particularly benefitted students was that it modeled a real-life IT setting. He said since a typical IT department cannot hack and infiltrate other business’ systems, students learned how IT professionals must always be on the defensive.

Blue teams, or the teams of students, were assigned computer systems and required to protect them from the red team, a team of hackers, Attaie said. “Their systems are a model of a real-world business,” Attaie said.

In addition to the IT portion of the competition, there is a business component, Attaie added. A team of judges, the white team, scored the student teams on factors such as meeting deadlines and other “real-world scenarios,” he said.

Jeffrey Stanton, interim dean of the iSchool, said in an email while the groups competed against each other, “the primary results were the learning that all of the student members did by having to defend their own networks.”

While the red team was comprised of cybersecurity professionals who worked to hack the student’s systems, they provided much feedback to the participants. This gave the students participating an understanding of how the cyber attacks worked, Stanton said.

It was the third consecutive year the iSchool fielded a team, Stanton said, and hosting the competition brings even more recognition to the school’s programs.

“Many of these programs are interdisciplinary and they showcase the unique strength of Syracuse to offer educational options that cross traditional boundaries,” he said.

The competition not only benefitted the iSchool, but the student participants were able to learn from real-world experience and IT professionals, Stanton said.

Said Stanton: “My personal expectation was that our students would have an unparalleled opportunity to learn from top notch professionals and that expectation was definitely exceeded.”

Published on March 22, 2015 at 11:45 pm

Contact Danny: dmantoot@syr.edu