Jackson Community College

Cyber defense team places third at competition 

Jackson Community College’s cyber defense team traveled to Flint recently to participate in the Michigan/Ohio Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, where they took third place and were the top ranked among two-year institutions.

The cyber defense competition allows institutions of higher education that offer information assurance or computer security curriculum to assess their students’ depth of understanding and competency in managing the challenges that are inherent in network security. Students take over a compromised network and take preventative measures to protect it from hackers. The competition gives students an opportunity to apply the theory and skills they have learned in their course work in a real situation.

Participating for JCC were team captain Karl Murray, Mark Williams, Darrell Jones, Moniqua Rearick, Tom Tyszko, Kyle Vere and Todd Spiegel, with advisor Larry Choate, assistant professor.

“The school can be very proud of what their team was able to accomplish,” Choate said. “The effort and dedication they exhibited was outstanding.”

JCC was third out of five teams participating in total, and the first two were four-year colleges. The top two teams are invited to participate in the Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition to be held at JCC the weekend of March 28, 29 and 30.