Southeast's cyber defense team excels

For the fifth consecutive year the Southeast Missouri State University Cyber Defense team won its competition against other competitors within the state, recently besting 11 other Missouri schools. Southeast's cyber defense team also will advance to regional competition for the fifth year.

So what does a cyber defense competition look like? Southeast Missouri reporter Ben Kleine described it as participants are "forced to fend off a dizzying array of hacks." Cyber defense and cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important as technology continues to spread across the world and more facets of our lives have gone digital. According to Dr. Vijay Anand, cybersecurity program director at Southeast, there is demand from auditing firms, network-security organizations, software companies, research organizations and IT departments all over the country to strengthen cybersecurity in several capacities. "Everything is online," Anand said. "The surface area for hackers is large. Not every system is as secure as it should be, and that's why there's a need for engineering talent. It's a race to solve all types of security problems."

We're glad to see Southeast's cyber defense team excelling and wish them the best of luck not only at the Midwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Qualification Competition on March 17 and 18 in Chicago, but as they venture on to careers in cybersecurity.