Iowa State U Wins National Cyber Analyst Challenge
A
team of students from Iowa State University has
won the National Cyber Analyst Challenge,
a contest designed to demonstrate
college students' strategic skills involving analysis and threat
identification.
The
Iowa State team won the competition after a
three-phase process that culminated with a real-time practical
challenge held
at sponsor Lockheed
Martin's Global Vision Center in Crystal City, VA. That
followed a three-month competition that started with dozens of college
teams
analyzing a single cyber case. Nine teams moved on to the second phase
in which
they received training from industry experts.
"Cyber
security analysts represent a critical
skills need for most organizations and these Iowa State students showed
great
promise through their hands-on teamwork to solve real-world challenges
and
progress through the competition," said Chris Kearns, Lockheed Martin
vice
president of enterprise IT solutions. "The lessons learned from the
challenge
will enable us to better support the academic community's cyber
curriculums."
The
Iowa state team received the winning prize of
$25,000 while others received between $7,500 and $15,000 to support
student,
faculty and curriculum development.
Temple
University's Institute for Business and
Information was another sponsor of the challenge.
Other
teams that were finalists in the
competition represented Carnegie Mellon University, Howard University,
Pennsylvania State University, Temple University, University of Alabama
Huntsville, University of Arizona, University of Central Florida and
University
of New Hampshire.
Speakers
during the final event included Major
Richard Cruz of the Defense Information Systems Agency and Jim
Connelly, chief
information security officer at Lockheed Martin.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.