March 28, 2024

CSM CyberHawks Take 3rd at Competition

CyberHawks
The College of Southern Maryland CyberHawks – CSM’s competitive cybersecurity team – earned third place at the second annual Maryland Community College Cyber Competition.

The College of Southern Maryland CyberHawks, CSM’s competitive cybersecurity team, earned the third place spot at the recently held second annual Maryland Community College Cyber Competition at the Montgomery Community College Germantown Campus. This is the second year that the team has demonstrated its competitive edge, coming in first in last year’s competition.

This year, the Cyberhawks competed against more than 20 teams from 10 different community colleges across Maryland.

CSM’s team includes three students, D. Price, C. Craft and J. Graves, who, because of the nature of their future careers, prefer not to include their full names.

“The team works well together and is very competitive,” said Professor D. Powell, the college’s networking course manager, office technology program coordinator and adviser for the CyberHawks cybersecurity club. “This is the second year of this competition, and we finished first in 2017 and third in 2018. That is a great accomplishment.”

The competition tested the team’s ability to solve cyber puzzles in five categories: cryptography, binary coding, computer forensics, networking communications, and a miscellaneous mystery topic.

In its Cybersecurity Jobs Report for 2018-2012, Cybersecurity Ventures predicted there will be 3.5 million cybersecurity job openings by 2021. “In 2017 the U.S. employs nearly 780,000 people in cybersecurity positions, with approximately 350,000 current cybersecurity openings, according to CyberSeek, a project supported by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), a program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the U.S. Department of Commerce. The current number of U.S. cybersecurity job openings is up from 209,000 in 2015. At that time, job postings were already up 74 percent over the previous five years, according to a Peninsula Press analysis of numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

The CyberHawks also competed in the National Cyber League Spring Competition. One player, Craft, competed in the Gold field and also made it to the top 10 percent of more than 3,000 players. “We also had another post in the top 10 percent of their field and another had 96 percent accuracy,” Professor Powell said.

CSM is designated as a Center of Academic Excellence in CyberSecurity. This program has been designated as a Center of Academic Excellence for two-year schools by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. For information about the CyberHawks, email [email protected]. For information about CSM’s cybersecurity program, visit CSM’s website.

For more about the College of Southern Maryland, visit its Leader member page.

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