Midwest CCDC 2006 Review

On the cyber-battlefield, the only evidence of the recently completed war games are a few empty tables, drained coffee cups and spent soda cans. For the warriors, the week after means catching up on sleep and reinforcing lessons learned. The carnage took place over the March 24-26 weekend when the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hosted a new breed of war games--the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC).

"All the teams competed well, and I hope they all learned something from the experience," explained Susan Hinrichs, a research professor at the Information Trust Institute (ITI), and co-organizer of the regional event.

From the field of eight teams--representing a mix of four-year universities and community colleges across the Midwest--the team from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale captured first place, earning an invitation to participate in the first national Collegiate Cyber Defense Exercise next month at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Second place honors went to Indiana Tech, with the team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign placing third.

According to Hinrichs, the student teams were challenged by periodic "Red Team" attacks and injected business activity which created a very stressful environment at times. "Beyond the technical skills, good communication skills and a common security philosophy made the difference for the successful teams," she added.

Erich Spengler, who teaches computer security at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, agreed. "Throughout the three-day event, the teams fought off what we would consider very aggressive attacks from a group of industry professionals."

"I think this Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) idea is great," remarked Dave Farrell from Cyber Defense Agency, a security consulting and research company, known to the competitors as the "Red Team." "It gives the students a broader perspective with respect to what it takes to defend an entire network of systems. It also points out that no one can know everything and that a team approach is required to achieve the goal of defending today's large, complex networked systems. There will always be vulnerabilities and exploits to take advantage of them, whether they are currently known to the public or not. It's how these are used in an overall attack strategy that can make an impact on a company's bottom line."

This first Midwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Exercise, hosted by ITI and the Center for Systems Security and Information Assurance (CSSIA), was held at the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science. The competition provides institutions that have information assurance or computer security curricula with a controlled competitive environment to assess their students' depth of understanding and operational competency in managing the challenges of protecting an enterprise network infrastructure and business information systems. It also provides an educational venue in which students are able to apply the theory and skills they have learned in their coursework.

Sponsors for the regional competition include the National Science Foundation, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, U.S. Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO), Homeland Security Market Development, Merrill Lynch, AT&T, and Netmedic.