For approximately 20 hours over a period of three days, a team of eight Seidenberg students participated in the 2011 Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition organized by Northeastern University and hosted by EMC. The event took place outside of Boston in early March.
A team of eight Seidenberg students participated in the 2011 Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NECCDC) in early March. The competition was organized by Northeastern University, and hosted by the EMC Corporation in Franklin, MA.
For three days, and approximately 20 hours of competition time, the Seidenberg team simulated a group of new employees brought in to secure, manage, and maintain a small business network. The students had to respond to business tasks called injects (26), and to defend against a live Red Team that vehemently attempted to break into their system. They had to handle all the above tasks while also maintaining a core group of critical services (email server, e-commerce site, etc.) This was hardly an easy exercise but the students found it to be a unique experience.
Participating cyber warriors included: Marc Kowtko (UG/Freshman/PLV), Phil Ricciardi (UG/Sophomore/PLV), Christian Sanabria (UG/Sophomore/PLV), Christopher Carvalho (UG/Sophomore/PLV), Max Wagner (UG/Junior/PLV), Marcus Hernandez (UG/Junior/PLV), Michael D’Angelo (UG/Junior/NYC), and Vinnie Monaco (UG/Senior/NYC). Andreea Cotoranu, associate director of assessment and adjunct instructor, served as the team’s coach.
Although the team did not place, they performed very well for their first time in the competition. More importantly, they were inspired by the challenge and have already started to plan and strategize for next year.
In addition to the cyber security exercise, the students had the opportunity to network with cyber security practitioners from companies like EMC, RSA (the security division of EMC), Bloomberg, Boeing, and Cisco, as well as with students and faculty from participating institutions.
Participating institutions included Rochester Institute of Technology, Alfred State College , Champlain College , Harvard University, Northeastern, Pace, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, Rochester Institute of Technology, Stevens Institute of Technology, University of Maine, UMass Boston, and the University of New Hampshire.