Tech Students Prepare For Cybersecurity Contest

Students with Tennessee Tech’s Cybersecurity Education, Research, and Outreach Center are preparing to take part in a global competition in January.

Cyber Range Engineer Travis Lee said the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition gives students hands-on experience as they conduct offensive security audits on a simulated production environment. Lee said everyone on the team has been working hard to prepare and they are all ready to go and do their best.

“As long as the students learn something, that’s going to be the biggest thing to us and should be to them,” Lee said. “Sometimes chasing that first place is the only thing on your mind as a student. But as an educator, I really hope that they bring something that they’ve learned back.”

Lee said the global competition will provide students with vital experience dealing with different kinds of people, such as customers, in challenging situations. Lee said the event is an important opportunity for students to showcase their skills in front of many organizations and companies that could hire them in the future.

“People like IBM, Black Hills Information Security, a lot of other sponsors, they’ll be there watching the teams,” Lee said.

Lee said competitors are supposed to avoid accidentally taking down any machines and report any security vulnerabilities they find during the audit process. Lee said the biggest thing the team is focusing on right now is improving its report writing and presentations.

“So how to be more professional with your writing, how to be more professional with presentations,” Lee said. “Because at globals there are presentations that the team members have to do. So they’ve been constantly prepping, each member, to be ready to give their portion of the presentation. They’ve been working out planning strategies for how to be time efficient with writing the report and how to get the best report out of the time period that they have.”

The team earned its spot in the global event by taking first place in the regional competition hosted at Tech. Lee said Tech has made it to the global competition before, but only as a wild card pick.

“It’s already boosted morale,” Lee said. “The students are really excited. They’ve been prepping constantly. Since I believe a day or two after the regional competition they immediately started prepping for globals.”