Palmetto Cyber Defense Competition coverage by Charleston's  Live5News
Channel: Tim Terrebonne
Date: 2014-05-19

The Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center Atlantic and the South Carolina Lowcountry Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) (http://charleston.afceachapter.org) jointly organize the Palmetto Cyber Defense Competition (PCDC). The goal of the PCDC is to energize South Carolina Colleges and High Schools and their students to focus on the development of technical skills in the areas of networking and cyber security in preparation for exciting careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).  The 2014 competition was conducted April 12-13, in the College Center at the Complex for Economic Development at Trident Technical College in North Charleston. 

Clemson University successfully defended their title on 11 April, 2014 as Champions of the Palmetto Cyber Defense Competition Collegiate division and Florence Career Center earned the prestigious Championship among South Carolina High Schools in this annual competition. University of South Carolina and College of Charleston took 2nd and 3rd place among the SC colleges and Summerville and Wando High Schools rounded out the high school performers. Winning team members each received a $500 Scholarship as well as PCDC Gold Medals.  The teams were awarded trophies as well as a $1000 Technology grant from the Armed Forces Communications and Electronic Association (AFCEA).

During the competition, students from each school formed Blue Teams of up to six competitors that were responsible for operating a small business network.  Each of the teams were provided with a mal-configured business network at the start of  the competition and were challenged to properly reconfigure the network, add new services, and respond to additional requirements; all the while defending against a Red Team of SPAWAR volunteers attempting to disrupt and penetrate their network. Blue Teams were scored for accomplishing administrative and business tasks while maintaining network/service availability, such as mail, database and web servers, as well as their ability to detect and respond to cyber threats.  Teams were challenged to respond to business requests such as the addition or removal of services, and balance security needs against business needs. 

The competition, awards, scholarships and technology grants were made possible through the generous support of many industry and institutional sponsors and volunteers, to include Dell, CACI, Trident Technical College, CISCO Sourcefire, Secure Mission Solutions, AFCEA International, Lockheed Martin, Pro2Serve, the Advanced Cyberforensics Education Consortium, the Rural Technology Fund, ISHPI, Scitor Corporation, Southern Educational Systems,  SRA, SRC, IMS, Vistronix, ITT Technical Institute, Sentar, the Air Force Association, the Law Office of Leanne M. Innet, as well as competition organizers SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic and the AFCEA South Carolina  Lowcountry Chapter.