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UW team wins Annual Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition

The University of Washington Seattle team, including students from the iSchool's Informatics program, won this year's Pacific Rim Regional Cyber Defense Competition (PRCCDC) that took place on March 23 and 24 at Highline Community College.

The annual competition pits teams of students from 12 Pacific Northwest colleges and universities against their peers and those already working professionally in the cybersecurity field.  As the winning team, UW Seattle will compete in the National Championship on April 19 in San Antonio.

During both the regional and national contests, each student team is presented with a pre-configured networked infrastructure of a fictitious company that they are tasked to operate. A “Red Team” of attackers attempts to vandalize and break into the network. These attackers are professionals familiar with the challenges IT organizations face every day. The student teams must defend against the attacks of the Red Team.

The competition develops the students’ experience and skills, and also improves their team work project management skills. Participation is an integral part of the curriculum for the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity at the University of Washington.

This year's teams included one from the University of Washington Seattle and one from University of Washington Bothell. Students on the UW Seattle team are from the Information School Informatics program and the Computer Science and Engineering Department.

A UW team recently won another Cyber Defense Competition held in Hawaii in March.

In addition to the UW Seattle campus, participating universities and colleges include: DeVry University, Eastern Washington University, The Evergreen State College, Highline Community College, ITT Technical Institute at Boise State University, Lewis and Clark College, Linfield College, University of Idaho, UW Bothell, Western Washington University, and Whatcom Community College.

Sponsors at the Platinum level include Accuvant Labs, Boeing and Microsoft.  Avanade, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and NathCorp are Silver sponsors for the event.