Idaho State University’s NIATEC Program Hosting Cyber Security Competition

 The NIATEC Invitational Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition will last approximately 10 hours. It starts and 9 a.m. and will be over by 8 p.m.

“The ISU NIATEC students have put together an impressive competition,” Advisor Ryan Lind said. “This event helps developing security experts gain experience implementing security principles in a dynamic environment. We’re pleased at the level of interest in the competition and the number of schools participating.”

Participating teams include Central Florida University, Brigham Young University, Southern Utah University, Brigham Young University-Idaho, Weber State University and the LDS Business College.

The cyber defense competition put teams in the role of system administrators attempting to defend their networks from an aggressive red team, which seeks to cripple the availability of their systems. At the same time, the teams are responsible for developing and implementing security policy and controls to secure both the digital and technical environments. The theme of this year’s competition is “Lord of the Token Ring.” Token rings are a type of digital network.

NIATEC students have developed a dynamic virtual infrastructure and populated it within a creative scenario environment to produce a holistic security experience.

“The unique part of what we are going is that we are combining the industrial control systems into a corporate infrastructure defense for the first time,” said Corey Schou, director of ISU Informatics Research Institute.

The Idaho National Guard and Air National Guard will be participating as judges and as competitors.  Portions of the funding for this event have been provided by Idaho Central Credit Union.