International competitions hone good cyber skills
December 16, 2024
Practice makes perfect, so to be perfect – or at least be really good at something – it’s important to practice anytime, anywhere.
Dakota State University students are honing their cybersecurity skills everywhere they can, in class, through campus clubs, and with competitions that take place in Madison, in the U.S., and around the world.
Shane Donahue, a DSU alumnus who is now working as a cyber professional, is one of several from DSU chosen for the U.S. Cyber Team for several years in a row. This fall, he traveled with the team to Chile to take part in the International Cybersecurity Competition (ICC), where they took fourth place. The U.S. team was also invited to be a guest competitor at the European Cyber Security Challenge in Turin, Italy in October; the U.S. team took second on the guest leaderboard.
ICC involved both a Jeopardy-style Capture the Flag (CTF) and an Attack-Defense CTF component. Jeopardy CTF is a conventional CTF, with a list of challenges to solve, typically in any order, he explained. Attack-Defense is more dynamic, as each team has a set of services they need to defend while simultaneously developing and throwing exploits against other teams' services.
As a student, competitions helped him develop the necessary skillset. Now, taking it to an international level, “gives me a glimpse into truly top-tier CTF performances, and encourages me to ‘get good’ at these skills,” he said. “Get good” is cyber competition lingo for improving skills.
“Communicating and optimizing your performance while under a lot of stress is a valuable skill in my opinion, and is best exercised in events like these,” Donahue said.
He stated that some of the translatable soft skills developed through these experiences are learning how to clearly communicate, plan with the team, and try to achieve consensus in a group, so “spending time with other competitors, during the event or while sightseeing, is an invaluable experience.”
DSU senior Gwen Vongkasemsiri is also a member of the U.S. Cyber Team, and competed in last year’s international competition in San Diego, Calif.
This year, she was also chosen to represent the U.S. on the first ever all-women’s U.S. team, which competed in the Kunoichi Cyber Games in Tokyo, Japan in November. She knew some of the team members from other competitions, including DSU alumnus Gillian Morris, but by being together in person, “I felt a lot closer to them, like they’re my cyber sisters,” she said.
She said all the team members have had similar challenges and experiences, like being the one girl on high school cyber teams. “We’ve all come through an atmosphere of mostly men and all been in that situation, so they were able to bond and communicate really well, and work as a unit so we could focus on competing,” she stated. The U.S. women’s team took second out of four teams.
They were able to expand their influence by taking a field trip to a local school.
“We introduced ourselves, talked about technology, and gave a presentation similar to CybHER® (a DSU educational outreach club),” she said. “I hope we made a good impact on those students.”
Because DSU students and alumni have had positive experiences with cybersecurity competitions over the years, that removes a lot of obstacles for upcoming students, she said. “We can build on previous challenges and see how competitions are evolving. That way, you never stop learning.”
Vongkasemsiri, a native of Tennessee, will graduate with a cyber operations and network & security administration double major in May 2025 and is set to work at Microsoft.