The last weekend of April, OSUSEC’s Cyber Defense team competed in NCCDC, the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. The competition required us to secure and administer a handful of networks full of virtual machines hosting common business services, as well as continuously respond to IT request tickets and deliver professional reports to supervisors. Students are tested not only on their cybersecurity skills, but also on their time management and interpersonal skills. We did not place in this final event, but since only ten teams across the nation were invited to compete, we were excited to represent OSU two years in a row!

Saturday evening, after the competition ended, the team attended a networking event, with recruiters representing all of the event sponsors. Many team members were selected for on-site interviews, which was very exciting!

The Sunday after the last day of competition was a panoply competition. This was a “king-of-the-hill” competition and was offered to the team as an extra, fun event.

The team consisted of Julie Weber, Mike Carris, Matt Jansen, Evan Mrazik, Otso Barron, Ayden Murphy-Kirsch, Casey Colley, and Brandon Ellis, and was chaperoned by Emily Longman.

Congratulations to Stanford University, who finished first place!