Cyber Team Earns Top Spot in VIVID Competition

The cybersecurity competition team at University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) placed first in the East Region of Phase One of the Virtual Internship and Varied Innovative Demonstrations (VIVID) competition-a tournament designed help students translate academic learning to cybersecurity practice.

The March 11-14 event was open to institutions accredited as National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity by the National Security Agency.

"I am happy for the team and impressed by their effort in the first phase of the competition," said Jesse Varsalone, collegiate associate professor of cybersecurity technology at UMGC and faculty coordinator of the team. "Finishing first in the East Region in this national competition is another example of the skills our students are developing outside of the classroom."

Based on results of the Phase One virtual event, UMGC will join other regional winners in a live showdown at the CAE Annual Colloquium. That competition will be held in St. Louis, Missouri, on Oct. 7-10, 2024.

The Phase One competition included a Jeopardy-style capture-the-flag (CTF) event on day one, red team tasks (defensive) on day two, and blue team tasks (offensive) on day three. Competing on UMGC's five-member winning team were graduate students Hugo Concha, Joel Francis and Morgan Morgan and undergraduates Aiden Bennett and Maxwell Troisi-Rauschenberger.

VIVID is organized through a consortium that includes the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Augusta University, University of Arizona and Florida International University. More than 65 universities competed in the Phase One event in March. The University of Central Florida finished first in the Southeast Region, Emory Riddle earned first in the West Region and Cedarville University captured first in the North Region.

The UMGC cybersecurity competition team is off to a fast start this year. On Jan. 20, the team advanced to the regional finals of the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (MACCDC) by finishing in the top 10 among universities from its region. In February at HacktheBox, the team moved up to second place-from third-in the United States and rose four spots to eighth place in the world.

Established in 2012, the UMGC cybersecurity team comprises students, alumni and faculty who compete regularly in digital forensics, penetration testing and computer network defense scenarios that help them gain experience to advance their cybersecurity careers. To prepare for competitions, students detect and combat cyberattacks in the university's Virtual Security Lab and work through case studies in an online classroom.

The UMGC team has earned numerous honors throughout its history, including championships in local, national and international competitions. In addition to several top-three finishes in the Maryland Cyber Challenge, UMGC won the gold medal in the 2014 Global CyberLympics and took first place in 2015 in the inaugural DiploHack competition sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. UMGC also won a Silver Award in the 2016 National Cyber Analyst Challenge and finished third in the 2022 Maritime and Control Systems Cybersecurity Con Hack the Port competition.

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