Young K-State Cyber Defense Team Shows They Are Capable of Competing at High Levels

By Mallory Pittman

The Kansas State Cyber Defense Team began competing about four years ago, being started by a number of Alumni. One of them, Dr. Bartis, is now a professor in Kansas State University's engineering department. By their second year, the teams were already achieving placements within the top three at events.

Club President, Richard Petrie (far left) with other Cyber
 Defense Club members at this years CANSec competition.

At their spring semester competition they have managed to take home second and third place awards.

In addition, they have taken first place two years in a row at the Central Networking and Security

(CANSec) competition.

Many of their competitions are structured very differently as far as teams that attend. The national competition held in Iowa invites and qualifies three college or university teams, and qualifies three high school teams. On the other hand, CANSec is composed of teams that all do research together.

Kansas University is a rival of Kansas State University, as they have competed at all of the same competitions so far. Richard Petrie, the club president, stated “It’s always a good feeling when we do well when they [Kansas University] are there."

Iowa State is the team to beat when Kansas State's team is at a competition with them, since they have two teams that compete and have a lot of practice as a result of the amount competitions they host for their students and others.

The success of a team depends a lot on the academia. Iowa State has full time professors that focus completely on putting on competitions. They receive large amounts of money, resources, and experience that give Iowa State an advantage.

Competition experience is also crucial, as a lot of improving is about learning from mistakes and not making the same ones again. On one occasion, the Kansas State team made a terrible mistake within the first three minutes of the competition, losing a flag, which cost them 15 percent of the team's score. Petrie is still very proud of his team, however, as they continued to push through and work as if they still had a chance to win.

 For the rest of the competition K-State's team performed very well and unofficially finished in second place, if the points they lost from their mistake were not to be counted. The Kansas State team even ended up beating out many other teams that did not lose any points from lost flags. This was a prime example of the team’s moral and shows what makes Kansas State University's team special.

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