COOKEVILLE – A team of Tech cybersecurity students has secured a wildcard slot allowing them to take part in the Global Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition International Finals.
The finals will be held in Rochester, NY, from Jan. 6-9, 2022.
This year’s team from Tech consists of team captain Kaitlyn Carroll, Austin Brown, Austin Tice, Jesse Holland, Jacob Sweeten and John Housley. Five members of the six-member team are CyberCorps scholarship for service students a program funded by the National Science Foundation. A team from Tech has not attended the finals since 2018.
“At its heart, CPTC is a bit different from several other collegiate cybersecurity competitions,” according to the competition’s website. “Instead of defending your network, searching for flags or claiming ownership of systems, CPTC focuses on mimicking the activities performed during a real-world penetration testing engagement conducted by companies, professional services firms and internal security departments around the world.”
The Global Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC) is an offensive cybersecurity competition focused on developing skills that help organizations better understand their cybersecurity weaknesses and how to correct these flaws. The competition provides a combination of technical and professional communication skill demonstration as teams must interact and report back to the leadership of a fictitious company.
Each year the competition focuses on a different business sector. In the past, these sectors have included energy, finance, transportation and healthcare. This year the competition will focus on industrial food manufacturing and retail sector.
“We are thrilled to return to the finals this year! After a semester of restarts after COVID-19 interrupted/modified so many competition schedules, it is nice to feel like we are back in the lane again. We are incredibly proud of the efforts of these young men and women,” Eric Brown, assistant director of Cybersecurity Education Research and Outreach Center said.
The competition has more than 100 schools that compete across eight global regions. From San Francisco to Dubai, these top cybersecurity student teams will gain real-life experience from the competition that will benefit their eventual work environments.
“Many students get co-op and career offers as a direct result of the competition,” according to the website.
To learn more about The Global Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition, visit https://cp.tc.
