North Eastern Regional Cyber Defense Competition

Eight cadets represented West Point and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the North Eastern Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH. This annual event pits schools from all over the country against one another in an "inherit and defend" style cyber competition. Teams were tasked with protecting and maintaining services running on over a dozen different physical and cloud based machines while a dedicated "red cell" hacker group attempted to penetrate their infrastructure and disrupt digital services. The mission of the CCDC system is to provide institutions with an information assurance or computer security curriculum a controlled, competitive environment to assess their student's depth of understanding and operational competency in managing the challenges inherent in protecting a corporate network infrastructure and business information systems. The team took eighth place in this highly competitive field, a good result considering this was the first time West Point has competed in the event since 2012.