The team of people are assigned to play the role of end users of the Blue Teams' networks. They can request changes to be made to the Blue Teams' network throughout the competition in the form of anomalies. The Green Team members are recruited from undergraduate student population, less technical corporate partners and ISU faculty across campus. This wide variety of computer skill levels provides true tests of usability for the Blue Teams. The addition of the Green Team is what helps keep the students focused on providing a useable network, as well as a secure one.
Published in Chapter:
Cyber Defense Competitions as Learning Tools: Serious Applications for Information Warfare Games
Julie A. Rursch (Iowa State University, USA) and Doug Jacobson (Iowa State University, USA)
Copyright: © 2012
|Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0149-9.ch004
Abstract
In a cyber defense competition, students design, configure, and maintain a set of servers and a network in a secure manner. The students’ goal during the competition is to prevent security breaches and to remediate any exploits that occur while maintaining a fully functional network for their end users. Cyber defense competitions provide active student learning, mimic real-world situations, and provide engagement with computer and network security topics. To date, Iowa State University has hosted 18 cyber defense competitions across four divisions: high school students, community college students, ISU students, and four-year university students from across the nation. This chapter provides a brief history of cyber defense competitions, as well as describes how they are run. The authors also address the needs of different audiences who participate in cyber defense competitions and show that beyond building and strengthening computer and network security skills, cyber defense competitions can be used for recruitment, retention, advanced training, and experimentation for students.