SEMO cybersecurity team becomes competitive in a short time

Having won the Missouri Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition last month, Southeast Missouri State University's cybersecurity students are looking to build on the fledgling team's success at the Midwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on March 28 and 29.

At Moraine Valley Community College in Chicago, the competition will feature cyberdefense teams from Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. Unlike the state competition, which this year featured Southeast and Northwest Missouri State Univeristy, the regional features more teams and is conducted in person, as opposed to a virtual setting.

In just its second year, the team, led by faculty adviser and assistant professor Vijay Anand, also went to regionals last year.

If they win in Chicago, the team of eight competitors and three alternates will advance to national competition April 25 through 27 in San Antonio. Team members mostly range in age from 20 to 25, although there are a couple working on second degrees, Anand said.

Preparation is "very intense" and students put in long hours when the contest approaches, said Anand, who teaches many of the university's cybersecurity courses.

An example of a

cybercompetition premise is where an IT company finds its people are incompetent and hires new staff, Anand said. The new people have to secure the company's systems, ensure services are running as expected and defend against incoming attacks from outside the network. The new staff also has to reconfigure flawed systems.

"So it is just like a real-world experience in terms of how a typical IT organization or a software organization works," said Anand, who teaches many of Southeast's cybersecurity courses. "They have to keep maintaining services up, they have to incorporate all kinds of things that top management is trying to keep there [and] at the same time they have to defend against attacks."

Part of preparation means using a research lab in the Otto and Della Seabaugh Polytechnic Building. The lab features "all kinds of operating systems" in different configurations, allowing students to work through scenarios so there's more preparation when students get access to the cyberstadium.

This year, the cyberteam comes with a mascot of sorts -- an otter eating a watermelon, which proved lucky at last year's state contest. Team member Travis Holland of Dexter, Mo., was under attack by an opposing Red Team, which was trying to take control of his computer.

The only thing Holland could do was change the background image of his computer screen -- to an image of an otter eating a watermelon, squad member Blynn Atchley said.

"The Red Team just stopped and then continued on and got off his computer, and we pretty well went on from there," said Atchley of Malden, Mo. "Well, they brought it up to us over at regionals [last year]. They thought it was so hilarious that we did that because no one else was really messing with them, trying to get them out of the system. That was one thing they couldn't change was changing the background, so we changed it and they couldn't do anything ... but close their window."

Last year, the students finished fifth, but it was the first time they'd competed in regionals and it was against more established cyber teams. "There are a few tricks we have. We are going to prepare on those tricks," Anand said.

To be chosen for the team, Anand said, students have to be members of the Cyber Defense Club, founded by student Jeremy Wiedner. There is an open call for those who want to compete; those students practice with others, and whoever does well moves on to actual competition. The rest are alternates.

In a way, team members said, having experience is an advantage, but in other ways it's not. Students said they know how to do things this time they didn't know the last go-round, but at the same time they worry about whether they've prepared enough and realize how much they still don't know.

"It's very stressful, so we try and break up the tension and stress with having a little bit of fun joking around, listening to some music, things like that. Trying to have a fun time even though we want to pull our hair out," said Wiedner of Imperial, Mo.

Along with Wiedner and Atchley, Southeast's team includes Charles Harner of Joppa, Ill., Melanie Thiemann of Wentzville, Mo., Nick Howe of Malden, Jake Schnurbusch of Jackson, Travis Holland of Dexter, and George Papulis of Ballwin, Mo.

Wiedner said he hopes the program and the number of clubs in the state will grow in the years to come.

"Cybersecurity is important, and it's going to be even more important in the future as everything is Internet- and cloud-based," Papulis said, making it easier for a malicious person to steal credit card information, for example.

"It's important that these programs grow so that we can try and help defend all this information," Papulis said.

rcampbell@semissourian.com

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