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group of CENT students
Honolulu CC-Computing, Electronics and Networking Technologies team places 4th in the nation.

A team of students from the Computing, Electronics and Networking Technologies (CENT) program at Honolulu Community College placed 4th in the fall 2015 National Cyber League competition.

A total of 129 teams from more than 80 colleges and universities throughout the nation competed. The National Cyber League was first run in 2011 with a vision to “provide an ongoing virtual training group for collegiate students to develop, practice and validate their cybersecurity skills using next-generation high-fidelity simulation environments.”

CENT Professor Aaron Tanaka used the National Cyber League competition to enhance an ethical hacking course. Three teams were formed using students from this class, along with three additional students who competed in the 2014 National Cyber League.

The three teams were Honolulu CCCENT, Honolulu CC-HATS and Honolulu CC-Makai. All three teams performed well, with Honolulu CCCENT placing fourth in the nation.

The members of the Honolulu CCCENT team are team captain, Jayson Hayworth, Taylor Kina, Kevin Ryan, Eric Kotake, Ahloy Chang, Derrick Le and Nathn Fiesta. The team captains for the other two teams are Gerome Catbagan (Honolulu CC-HATS), and Chance Kawasaki (Honolulu CC-Makai).

CENT students
Honolulu CCCENT’s National Cyber League competition teams

Honolulu CCCENT team captain Hayworth provided a student reflection of his experience.

“The strongest impact this challenge had on the teams was the ability to demonstrate how effective working together can be,” said Hayworth. “It became extremely obvious how quickly we were able to blow through challenges when we were able to work in pairs and apply multiple minds to the same problem.”

“The entire challenge was a huge roller coaster ride for our team,” continued Hayworth. “It was an absolutely amazing experience that had us go from being absolutely ecstatic and screaming in the middle of the night to being completely lost and dazed in a mirage of bits and bytes. Our students can’t wait for the next years games—we’ll be utilizing everything we’ve learned here and sharing it with all CENT students for the benefit of the program.”

Honolulu CC’s CENT program is a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance/Cyber Defense for Two-Year Education.

For the full story, read the Honolulu CC’s The Water Cooler article.

—By Billie Lueder

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