On February 27 and 28, 2004, a group of educators, students, government and industry representatives gathered in San Antonio, Texas, to discuss the feasibility and desirability of establishing regular cyber security exercises with a uniform structure for post-secondary level students. During their discussions this group suggested the goals of creating a uniform structure for cyber security exercises might include the following:
from which any educational institution can build a cyber security exercise
to allow for competition among schools, regardless of size or resources
to offer students an opportunity to gain practical experience in information security
to help facilitate the development of a regular, national level cyber security exercise, the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security at the University of Texas at San Antonio agreed to host the first Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) for the Southwestern region in April of 2005.
CCDC is unique in that it focuses on the operational aspect of managing and protecting an existing network infrastructure. While other exercises examine the abilities of a group of students to design, configure, and protect a network over the course of an entire semester, this competition is focused on the more operational task of assuming administrative and protective duties for an existing “commercial” network.
Teams are scored based on their ability to detect and respond to outside threats, maintain availability of existing services such as mail servers and web servers, respond to business requests such as the addition or removal of additional services, and balance security needs against business needs.
