Honolulu CC-UH West O‘ahu team battle cyber security

Team Menehune place second at regional competition

Honolulu Community College
Contact:
Billie K T Lueder, (808) 845-9187
Communications & External Affairs, Chancellor's Office
Posted: Mar 21, 2013

Honolulu CC-UH West Oahu Team with White Hat Judges, MSgt Patrick Kellaherand Ms. Summer Lee.
Honolulu CC-UH West Oahu Team with White Hat Judges, MSgt Patrick Kellaherand Ms. Summer Lee.

Under the mentorship of Honolulu CC Professor Aaron Tanaka, a team consisting of Honolulu CC Computing, Electronics & Networking Technologies (CENT) students and University of Hawai‘i at West O‘ahu BAS CENT students, placed second in the At-Large Regional of the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC).

The At-Large regional competition that is held virtually consisted of teams from four-year universities in Hawai‘i, Alaska, Utah, Wyoming and Pennsylvania, and community colleges in Hawai‘i and Alaska. University of Alaska Fairbanks was the host and the winner of the At-Large regional.

The CCDC is a three-day Cyber Security Competition which specifically focuses on the operational aspects of managing and protecting an existing "commercial" network infrastructure. College teams consist of up to eight full-time students who operate as a Blue Team (Defenders). The White Team (Industry Judges) is responsible for giving students injects or tasks to be accomplished as well as grading their performance. The students are required to perform these tasks while a Red Team (Attackers) attempt to disrupt their actions.

For this competition, the students were put in charge of managing and securing a fictitious Bio-Tech Animal Research Facility. The students had to deal with a bomb threat, attacks from animal rights hacktivists, all the while attempting to perform tasks given to them from a fictitious boss. In the scenario, the bomb did go off and the students were tasked with getting the system online again from a "warm" backup site.

The Honolulu CC-UH West O‘ahu team consisted of: Team Captain Thomas Dwyer, Michael Caralos, Taylor Kina, Christopher Pachoiczak, Joseph Santiago, Jianjum Tan, Anthony Vandegrift, and Zhi Hai Wu.

White Team Judges included MSgt Patrick Kellaher, Cyber Operations Controller from Hickam Air Force Base and Summer Lee, Systems Analyst from Acadia Community Services. The judges were responsible for giving the students injects (tasks to perform) and for monitoring their performance. 

The National Finals for the CCDC which is held in El Paso Texas is frequently attended by employers such as the FBI, Homeland Security and the Department of Defense looking for high quality candidates for Cyber Security positions. Former Secretary of Defense Roberts Gates highlights the importance of providing quality training programs in Cyber Security in his  recent statement, “The United States is preparing for the next generation of war, one that will not be fought on traditional theaters—land, sea and air—but in the world of computers and information networks: cyberspace.”

Honolulu Community College is a Cisco Academy Support and Instructor Training Center, Microsoft IT Academy and VMware IT Academy. The CENT program has an established articulation agreement with the University of Hawai‘i at West O’ahu leading to a Bachelor of Applied Science Degree in CENT.

For more information, visit: http://www.honolulu.hawaii.edu