NECCDC

The Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NECCDC) is designed to provide a controlled competitive environment that will permit each participating institution to assess their students’ depth of understanding and operational competency in managing the challenges inherent in protecting enterprise network infrastructure and business information systems.

NECCDC provides an opportunity for qualified educational institutions in the Northeast to compete in this environment and is part of a National CCDC, which provides a unified approach for nine regions across the country.

Unlike a CTF event where teams attack systems, CCDC is a defense competition. Each team takes over an identical, intentionally insecure network for a fictional business and has to keep it running while securing it against professional attackers. It simulates the real job of an IT and security team that inherits an environment they did not build.

How Teams Are Scored

• Keeping Services Online: a scoring engine regularly checks services like web, SSH, and DNS; each passing check earns points.
• Complete Injects: management issues time-limited business tasks, such as writing a policy or deploying a new service, that are graded on completion and quality.
• Defend against the Red Team: successful compromises take points away. Well-written incident reports can win back some of the points lost to the Red Team.

Services and injects are each worth half of the score, and Red Team activity can take away up to half. See the Scoring Overview for details.

Getting Started

A staff or faculty coach registers the team and pays the annual league membership fee on the Join the League page. Teams compete in the NECCDC Qualifier, the top teams advance to the NECCDC Regional, and the regional winner goes on to the National CCDC. New to CCDC? Read CCDC Basics for who is involved, how to prepare, and tips for new teams.