A university with no students with significant prior information security experience may find collegiate information security competition a daunting task. Most competitions require a large amount of technical knowledge to set up, along with a fair amount of organization. But how are students with no information security knowledge going to compete in competitions and keep from getting completely owned? Well, they’re not. The most important step to successful competition is educating oneself.
In this presentation, I describe our efforts organizing a team of undergraduate students interested in creating our school’s cyber defense organization and participating in CTF competitions. I’ll introduce the methodologies that we used (and continue to use) in order to start educating and motivating bright students about information security and keep them interested. Information security education must continue outside the classroom. Although the demand for information security knowledge is high, the requirements are rigid. While the industry is growing very rapidly, students who do not show passion and dedication to the field and deep practical knowledge will quickly be left behind. We aim to leave you armed and ready to compete with and learn from some of the best and brightest information security students in the world.
Mike Arpaia is a Junior in the CyberSecurity program at Stevens Institute of Technology and is a co-founder of the Stevens Cyber Defense Team. Mike works as a Security Consultant/Penetration Tester Intern at Gotham Digital Science LLC. His primary interests are in web application security and exploitation.