News
Tennessee Tech Cybersecurity Team to Compete in New York
A team of Tennessee 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, N.Y., 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 (Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition) 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.”
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.
