NICCDC Mission

The mission of the NIATEC Invitational Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NICCDC) is to provide institutions with an information assurance or cybersecurity curriculum in a controlled, competitive environment to not only expose students to important security domains but to assess their depth of understanding and operational competency in managing the challenges inherent in protecting a corporate network infrastructure and business information systems. What sets the NICCDC apart from other CCDC events, is the opportunity for participants to apply real world theories and concepts in a challenging and lifelike business environment.

NICCDC Events are designed to:

  • Expose higher education students to meaningful learning opportunities through challenging but enjoyable realistic scenarios
  • Promote mission-oriented decision making through scenarios that score decision making over technical abilities
  • Provide opportunities for participants to apply the theory and practical skills they have learned in their course work
  • Encourage the development of teamwork, ethical behavior, and effective communication both within and across teams
  • Create interest and awareness of information assurance and security topics among participating institutions and students

NICCDC competitions ask student teams to assume administrative and protective duties for an existing “commercial” network – typically a small fictional company with 50+ users, 7 to 10 computer systems, and common Internet services such as a web server, mail server, and e-commerce site. Each team begins the competition with an identical set of hardware and software and is scored on their ability to detect and respond to outside threats, maintain availability of existing services that enable the primary business activity of the organization such as mail servers and web servers, respond to business requests such as the addition or removal of additional services, and balance security needs against business needs. Throughout the competition an automated scoring engine is used to verify the functionality and availability of each team’s services on a periodic basis and traffic generators continuously feed simulated user traffic into the competition network. A volunteer red team provides the “external threat” and allows the teams to match their defensive skills against live opponents.