A UAF student team won a regional cyber defense contest March 6 and will advance to the nationals in San Antonio, Texas, in late April.

The National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition challenges teams of students to defend a network of computers against Internet attackers.

UAF took third at nationals last year and has won the regional contest four years in a row. This was team captain Will Showalter's fourth year participating.

Teams must use network defense tools, such as  firewalls, and securely install and configure network services, such as web, database and email servers.

The UAF team began preparing in September. Members trained every Saturday afternoon and Monday evening. They prepared a 60-plus-page printed "playbook," and held three practice competitions on their own dedicated virtual machine infrastructure.

UAF CCDC student team members include Showalter, Brahm Lower, Bucky Frost, Arsh Chauhan, Shane Tachick, Mike Moss, Jesse Zhang and Noah Betzen. Alternates are Lyz Allen, Chris Hoch, Clayton Auld and Ann Tupek. Their coach is Orion Lawlor, associate professor of computer science.

UAF's Brian Hay, assistant professor of computer science, organized the "at large" regional, which uses a combination of both in-person hardware and his Remotely Accessible Virtualized Environment, a national National Science Foundation-funded virtual infrastructure system. Vincent Nestler from California State was also key in organizing the event. As well as government personnel, a number of current and former UAF computer science students helped prepare, organize and run the competition, including Paul Gentemann, Lucas McDaniel, Matt VanVeldhuizen, Erik Talvi and Nate Helms.

The University of Alaska Anchorage took second place, while Honolulu Community College took third. Also participating were members of a class from UAF's Community and Technical College, Penn State, Kapiolani Community College and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The national contest in San Antonio, Texas, will be held April 23-26. The title sponsor is Raytheon. Others include Goldman Sachs, network security companies and government agencies.

For more information, contact Lawlor at lawlor@alaska.edu.