DSU Cyber Team Headed to National Competition in April

A team of Dakota State University students is headed to a national competition next month. The eight member DSU team  competed in the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, or CCDC, in February. The group won in the “At Large” region event. Now the group will compete against nine other teams from across the country in the National CCDC competition.

CCDC was created in 2005 to establish a cyber security exercise for post-secondary students. The intent was to bring the worlds of operations and education together to better prepare graduates for the future.

For the competition, teams work with a simulated business, providing IT services while fending off attackers, called red teamers, which are meant to disrupt those services.Teams must also  work to resolve “injects,” or assigned tasks that might involve technical or business-oriented skills.

The DSU team holds weekly meetings, as well as practice and training exercises to build their technical skills, and work on some of the challenges that come with training.

The 2023 team members include:  Aaron Baker from Sheridan, Wyoming,  John Brumels from Sioux Falls and  Jonny Derenge, from Sioux Falls,  Jackson Heiberger, from Beresford, Annabelle Klosterman from Brandon,  Gaelin Shupe from Boulder, Colorado, Tristan Stapert form Tumwater, Washington, and Tyler Thomas, from Forest Lake, Minnesota. 

The National CCDC competition will be help April 28-30.