For the second consecutive year, a team coached by Honolulu Community College Professor Aaron Tanaka placed in the top three for the “At-Large” regional of the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition in Alaska.
The team consisted of students from the Computing, Electronics & Networking Technologies (CENT) program at Honolulu CC, and the University of Hawai‘i at West O‘ahu. The “At-Large” regional competition included teams from two-year colleges and four-year universities in Hawai‘i, Alaska, and Pennsylvania.
The three-day cyber security competition focuses on the operational aspects of managing and protecting a commercial IT infrastructure. College teams consist of up to eight full-time students who operate as defenders. Judges give giving students injects or tasks to be accomplished as well as grading their performance. The students are required to perform these tasks while a Red Team (Attackers) attempt to hack into their systems.
For this competition, the students were given the scenario of bringing on-line the IT services of a company which had just fired their entire IT staff. They were tasked with protecting and getting IT services up while another team was trying to hack into their system, reset passwords and perform other malicious activities.
The Honolulu CC-UH West O‘ahu team consisted of team captains, Thomas Dwyer and Taylor Kina, along with team members, Derek Choi, Nathan Fiesta, Eric Kotake, Cliff Lagunday, Melissa Osowski, and Joe Saludo. White Team Judges included IT security professionals, Summer Lee, Dave Decker and Tanya Kemmler.
The National Finals for the CCDC will be held in El Paso, Texas.
The CENT program at Honolulu CC provides students with a solid foundation in information & communication technology, as well as information security.