UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Amid studying for exams and completing coursework to wrap up the fall semester, students from the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State faced off against cyber challengers from around the country to garner an outstanding sixth-place finish among 129 teams that took part in the weeklong National Cyber League (NCL) competition finals held in December.
“IST Team #2,” as the sixth-place team of students called themselves, was led by security and risk analysis (SRA) junior George Beatty and included IST undergraduate students Alyssa Stackpole, Katie Dodds, Bobby Hallowell, Will Kacsur, Jackson Houser and Joe Williams, as well as three additional students from other schools. The IST students are all members of the Penn State Competitive Cyber Security Organization (CCSO), which regularly competes in cyber challenges throughout the school year.
Another team of IST students, “IST Team #1,” led by SRA junior Chris Masden and including Matt Frantz, Chris Eckert, CJ Beyer and Kevin Houk, also finished strong, with an impressive score of 5810 points out of a possible 9635 points.
The competition, which gives students the opportunity to sharpen their cyber-analysis skills, included trivia-like questions, steganography decoding — finding secret messages hidden within non-secret text or data — password cracking, Web exploitation and other daunting cyber challenges. The students were given fabricated data and worked offline to complete each challenge and submit answers to accumulate points.
“There are a variety of exercises for the students to work on, which is nice because some students have expertise in one field or domain, and others in other domains,” said Nick Giacobe, research associate and lecturer in the College of IST. “They can work together as a team, learn from each other as they gather knowledge remotely, and pass info back and forth.”
Giacobe, one of two advisers for the CCSO, supports the students in a variety of ways, from handling administrative paperwork, to helping students gain access to technology and equipment necessary for their competition, to staging “beat the adviser” practice sessions to help students prepare for competition. In short, Giacobe makes sure his students get the experience they need for cyber competition, but in a safe environment, since some cybersecurity tools might be unsafe for students to use in “real-world” situations.
Competitions like the NCL finals are important for students, said Giacobe, because in competition students can’t just say they know how to do an exercise, they must actually complete the tasks, from problem solving, to collaboration with teammates, to execution.
“If we think about cyber education, there are three components that we need for success,” said Giacobe, referencing an op-ed article written by Andrew Sears, dean of the College of IST, in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “One is classroom education — but in the classroom we can only do so much. Two is practical experience — an internship, which is built into their education here at IST. The third component is cyber competition — where, in a short amount of time, students can do so much more than they can achieve in the classroom. The classroom opens up the door to new kinds of learning, but these competitions give hands-on experience that isn’t accessible in any classroom, to give students a well-rounded skill set.”
The students of CCSO are not resting on the laurels of their NCL finals success; Giacobe said they are already engaged in a variety of new competitions right now, including the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Challenge regional qualifiers at the end of February, where he hopes the team will continue on to the regional finals in Baltimore. However, Giacobe said, the overall placement is less important than the experience the students get from competing.
“Confidence is key; it helps students find their expertise, and when that happens they really amaze themselves,” he said. “I’m excited for our students, all of them. Students get out of these competitions as much as they put into them. Most importantly, they learn a lot about themselves.”