The University of Toledo Club for Cyber Security recently ranked 33rd out of 144 teams in the CyberForce Competition 2022 organized by the Department of Energy (DOE) Argonne National Lab in Chicago.
The six members of the UToledo team — five from the master’s programs in cyber security — ranked first in the Service Scan Category, which ensures that various services such as a web server, an email server or a file server are running correctly. The competition included many R1 and R2 universities, such as Stanford University, Penn State, the US Military Academy and Georgia Tech University.
The team, from left to right, Yash Kakade; Asheq Siddiquee Tanmoy; Ketki Gokhale; Dr. Ahmad Javaid, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Sadiksha Aryal; Neeraj Shrestha and N H M Arafat.
Through the CyberForce Competition, the DOE has worked to increase hands-on cyber education to college students and professionals, awareness into the critical infrastructure and cyber security nexus and basic understanding of cyber security within a real-world scenario.
Utilizing critical infrastructure-focused scenarios, the DOE’s competition added realistic components that include a cyber-physical infrastructure, lifelike anomalies and constraints and actual users of the systems. This competition provides students a hands-on security approach to their infrastructure from their servers and virtual machines to the physical devices on their tables. And includes the strain of balancing security with usability; scores of participants include a user’s ability to continue normal work operations.
“The UToledo Club for Cyber Security formed a team of really motivated, well-trained and knowledgeable students from the MS in Cybersecurity and BS in Computer Science Engineering Technology programs to participate in the Annual DOE CyberForce Competition,” said Dr. Ahmad Javaid, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Paul A. Hotmer Cybersecurity and Teaming Research (CSTAR) Lab. “The competition focuses on cyber-defense exercises that are interactive and scenario-based, where participants engage in cybersecurity activities, methods, practices, strategies, policies and ethics. The Cybersecurity major at UToledo continues to train our students through hands-on-oriented coursework, internships and participation in these real-world-scenario-based competitions to prepare them to fill the national skill gaps in cybersecurity and protection of critical infrastructure.”
Dr. Weiqing Sun, a professor in the Department of Computer Science Engineering Technology and director of the master’s programs in cyber security, added, “The Master’s programs in Cyber Security at UToledo College of Engineering provide an experiential learning-rich curriculum tailored to student interests and industry needs. We have flexible program capstone options, state of art curriculum, experienced faculty and excellent facilities to prepare our students to succeed in their future cyber security careers. Our students have found this program home and have actively engaged in a variety of activities including federally sponsored cyber security research projects, UToledo IT security operations and summer internships at local companies. In addition, they have founded The University of Toledo Club for Cyber Security, through which they have organized several cybersecurity events and participated in the DOE CyberForce Competition.”
UToledo’s team hopes to take multiple teams to next year’s competition and are already working to make improvements in the specific categories where they fell short, said Asheq Siddiquee Tanmoy, president of the club.
“The top-performing teams had participated regularly in the competition before. We hope our continuous participation will further improve our performance,” he said. “The University of Toledo participated in 2019, and this year we have seen a significant improvement in the performance. We hope to make a continuous effort to participate in the competition and open the door for this ‘learning from real-life’ opportunity in the field of Cyber Security.”
