Combined MIS/CS Student Team to Compete at National Competition in San Antonio, Texas! | UAA College of Business and Public Policy

Combined MIS/CS Student Team to Compete at National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition in San Antonio, Texas!

ALCCDC Winners ‘Team A’ UAA’s combined team of both Management Information Systems (MIS) and Computer Science (CS) students won first place at the 2016 At-Large regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (ALCCDC) held March 18-20. The Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) has formally invited UAA’s winning team to compete in the 2016 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC) being held April 22 - 24, 2016, at the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas. Only ten teams in the U.S. are invited to the NCCDC. The NCCDC will cover costs including the team's airfare, hotel rooms, and meals during the competition. UAA teams have participated in the ALCCDC since 2013 and won second place in both 2014 and 2015 regional events.

In CCDC competitions, student teams undertake administrative and protective duties for an existing “commercial” network – typically a small company with 50+ users, 7 to 10 servers, and common Internet services such as a web server, mail server, and e-commerce site. An identical set of hardware and software is assigned to each team and scores are calculated based on their ability to detect and respond to outside threats, maintain availability of existing services such as mail servers and web servers, respond to business requests such as the addition or removal of additional services, and balance security needs against business needs. Also, a volunteer red team provides the teams with “external threats” and allows the competing teams to match their defensive skills against live opponents. (http://www.nationalccdc.org/index.php/competition/about-ccdc/mission)

The ALCCDC is a regional cyber defense competition. Each team competes remotely through the RAVE lab, which is a national, NSF-funded, virtual infrastructure, so they can access the environment through the standard VMware client. In addition to an automated scoring engine that verifies the functionality and availability of each team’s services on a periodic basis, each team has two unbiased judges physically present in the computer rooms throughout the competition. This year, two information security professionals from Anchorage and two FBI special agents served as our local judges.

The following teams competed in the 2016 ALCCDC:
Pennsylvania State University Altoona
University of Alaska Fairbanks
University of Alaska Anchorage
University of Hawaii at Manoa
University of Hawaii Maui College
University of Kansas
University of New Mexico Anderson School
Honolulu Community College
Kapiolani Community College

About Our UAA Teams, MIS Program, and Cyber Security Club

Competitors in national CCDC events must all be full-time students. For the At-Large CCDC, we are allowed to register two teams: one compliant team with all full-time students (UAA Team A) and one non-compliant team (UAA Team B) that included part-time students. UAA Team B would not be eligible for invitation to the national CCDC, even if it had won first place at ALCCDC.

Each team may consist of up to eight members. A total of 16 students were registered in this event and 15 students actually participated. Thirteen Management Information Systems (MIS) majors in the College of Business & Public Policy (CBPP) and two Computer Science (CS) majors in the College of Engineering comprised UAA’s teams.

As stated in the CCDC Mission, each team receives many business tasks (called “injections”) during the competitions while they protect their servers (e.g., web, email, database, and directory servers) and prevent/detect the attacks from hackers (called Red Team.) CCDC expects student teams to have a broad knowledge about IT environments and the ability to utilize time management and task prioritization skills. Our Management Information Systems students learn network management, network security, database management, web application development, and project management. Also, the MIS program emphasizes problem-solving techniques to analyze, design, program, implement, and manage solutions for business problems. UAA’s MIS program students are well-prepared to compete in these types of cyber defense and other technology-oriented competitions.

In 2014, one MIS major student led the effort to establish the Cyber Security Club (CSC) in order to help form a team to compete in the CCDC. In the CSC, students practice completing business tasks on server computers such as setting up web/FTP/mail services and practice performing network forensics such as monitoring the network and analyzing log files to detect abnormal activities in the network. In addition, students are learning to use both Windows and Linux-based operating systems to prepare for the CCDC environments.

Team A Members: (pictured from left to right)
Johannes Meyer (MIS)
Bomby Kitchpanich (MIS)
Eric Zaragoza (MIS)
Trevor Schmidt (MIS) - Team A Captain
Matthew Devins (CS)
Martin Boyle (CS) - Cyber Security Club Council Representative
Glenn De Guzman (MIS)
Daniel Ornelas (MIS) - Cyber Security Club President
(MIS – Management Information Systems major, CS – Computer Science major)

Coach for Team A (Cyber Security Club Faculty Advisor):
Yoshito Kanamori, Ph. D
Associate Professor in Management Information Systems,
Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences,
College of Business and Public Policy