Students · April 15, 2025
Cyber Defense Team Finishes Third at the Regional Invitational, Up From Fifth
Eight students kept a simulated rural clinic’s network running for two days while volunteer attackers tried to take it down.
A team of eight UW–Porter Falls students finished third of 14 teams at the North Central Collegiate Cyber Defense Invitational last weekend. Last year they placed fifth. The two schools ahead of them both have graduate programs in security and, in the team captain’s words, “a lot more people who are allowed to drink coffee legally after midnight.”
Every team gets the same network to defend, and it is set up badly on purpose. This year it was a fictional rural health clinic with an outdated patient-scheduling server, a shared front-desk login and a fax gateway that nobody could explain. For two days, teams harden the network, keep services running and answer business requests from a “clinic administrator,” while a red team of volunteer security professionals attacks all of them at once.
Porter’s team kept the patient-scheduling system online for 93 percent of the scored period. Its biggest loss came early on day one, when a compromised printer was used to reach the file server. The team’s incident reports scored second-best in the field. Judges said they were the only reports a clinic manager could actually have acted on.
“Fifth to third is the right kind of progress. They lost points to the printer, and they will never trust a printer again, which is the correct lesson for a security professional.”
— Dr. Tomasz Wierzbicki, associate professor, Department of Cybersecurity & Information Technology
The team is captained by junior Renata Okafor, a cybersecurity major. It practices Tuesday nights on the cyber range in Jarvis Technology Center. Six of the eight members return next year. Okafor said the team’s goal is “the obvious one.”
The team trains through the Cybersecurity Club. Students who want to try out can start with the club’s fall capture-the-flag event, which doubles as tryouts and is open to any major. Coursework and faculty are listed on the department page.
Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. The invitational, the simulated clinic, the team and its scores are invented, and no real network was attacked or defended.