Breaking The Streak - A CCDC Story

- 1 min

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This is NOT about a victory or win.

Instead, this is about how losing taught me more than any victory could have done.


The CCDC qualifiers

The Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, or CCDC, is a competition where multiple teams compete in a business-like scenario to secure a network against an active red team. Only the top 8 teams are allowed to move onto Regionals, where the stakes are much higher.

Before, Cal Poly Pomona’s CCDC team has consistently made it into the Regionals every year, but this year was different.

This year would be our first year in a long time where our team didn’t make it into Regionals. (We placed 9th.)

Aftermath

I wasn’t concerned about our placement. After all, getting the competition experience was the most important to me.

For one, I was able to expand my skillsets outside of networking (my main role in CCDC). For example, I split my focus between securing the firewall and completing injects.

Looking at our score breakdown, we lost many points due to service downtime and box resets. But we had the highest score on our injects. So it was great to see that the extra focus on injects made a difference.

With a lot more free time, I can continue to focus on improving for next competition.

Taylor Nguyen

Taylor Nguyen

Cybersecurity and other stuff