Tech-savvy B´ÎÔª students put their cyber security skills to the test during Wisconsin’s Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition in February. For the fourth straight year, the team, all members of the B´ÎÔª Cyber Raiders Organization for Networking (CRON) took first place and will move on to the Midwest regional competition in Chicago in March.

The students built and defended a mock production business infrastructure from professional “hackers” who are given the challenge to take each team’s production systems offline and breach their security. While the teams worked hard to fend off the hackers, the competition judging staff deployed network enhancement and upgrade challenges. The teams were judged on their performance and success in keeping their infrastructure secure.

Congratulations to the team. Pictured, left to right, are: Thomas Hill, Management Information Systems (MIS) major; Nathan Stachowiak, MIS; Tchaas Alexander-Wright, MIS; Matt Mahnke, software engineering (SE); Devin Vincent, SE; Erick Darrington, MIS; Aqeel Alshafei, computer engineering; and Team Captain Carl Saffron, MIS. Dr. Jeffrey Blessing, professor and MIS program director, is their faculty advisor.