Social Distancing and Changes to Our Meetings
COVID-19 has been one of the world’s worst pandemics, and it has greatly affected the way our country operates. With Syracuse University’s response to the pandemic and NY State guidelines, our club has been one of the many operations that has been affected.
Due to social distancing guidelines, our room capacity has been cut by more than half, and the room can’t hold all the members that we had last year. We couldn’t find any room in the iSchool that would be able to hold all the students with the current capacity. Also keeping in mind the goal for expansion of the club, we have decided to hold all general body meetings over Zoom video conferencing. We will send out the Zoom link weekly, on the morning of the meetings. However, don’t let this discourage you. We will still be able to share quality content and activities with you, and give you the support you need in order to improve your cyber security skills!
NCL and CPTC
In order to prepare for the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC), we need to participate in multiple cybersecurity competitions throughout the year. Starting as early as possible increases our chances the most. National Cyber League (NCL) is an online competiton that has challenges with a variety of difficulties. So it’s perfect for both aspiring hackers and cyber veterans. Topics include cryptography, password cracking, network traffic analysis, web application hacking, and more! The practice activities (aka the Gym) don’t open up until September 14th, but you can pre-register today! More info on the schedule can be found on their website. Registration costs $35.
Another competition coming up this semester is the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC). This is a little different from NCL as it is team based, and focuses more on mimicking the activities performed during real world penetration tests done by companies, professional firms, and internal security departments internationally. This competition requires a little more experience, so it’s important you register early and participate in club activities as well as NCL if you want to be on our team for CPTC and CCDC (a Google form will be sent out soon). The grand prize for CPTC has been $20,000 in the past, so I’m sure it’ll pay out well this year. More info can be found on their website.
See you all soon! If you have any questions, please let us know at isc@syr.edu. We encourage everyone to follow our Instagram & join our GroupMe!
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