CCDC Ohio Qualifiers 2020 Review

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Ohio: The most competitive State in the Midwest Region

On February 1st University of Akron won 2nd in Ohio for CCDC State Qualifiers. The team included Logan Curry (Team Captain), Collin Carrick (Linux Admin), Kyle Johnson (Linux Admin), Brandon Musgrave (Web Admin), Nick King (Windows Admin), James Vongsaphay (Windows Admin), Doug Enos (Splunk Admin), Amanda Szampias (Firewall/Network Admin), and Benjamin Russel (Alternate). UA has advanced to the Wildcards Match on February 29.

Other Teams from Ohio Include: Baldwin Wallace University, Cedarville University, Kent State University, Lakeland Community College, Lorain County Community College, Ohio State University, and Tiffin University. That is 8 Ohio teams! OSU, Kent State, Tiffin, and UA are brand new 2020 teams.

Review

This is the first time I competed with a full-sized 8 person team. My past teams had 2, 4, or 5 members. Now we are full power! It was so NICE to stay in my Palo Alto/Windows 8 home base. The team could do more... with more people on the team! We even have a strategic seating arrangement.

Everyone improved the second time around. Brandon kept the CentOS E-commerce and Debian MySQL box safe while the SQL DROP TABLES attack took place. Collin fixed the Postfix and Dovecot services which were down when the competition started. Nick was getting slammed with Windows injects and kept the good fight going! James took control of the Windows 10 box, ran updates, and answered business requests. Kyle defended Phantom and helped on multiple Linux machines. Doug was our main control on Splunk and collected logs using Splunk Forwarders. Doug came up with a good secret idea for the future. I put in some FW rules and answered Palo Alto business tasks. Logan orchestrated multiple documents when a task required all hands on deck. Logan managed work/people and submitted documents on time. Everyone helped out on injects.

I'm personally very excited for Wildcards. Its a second chance to do things better. To implement new plans. To rewrite rules that didn't work. To prepare ourselves for Regionals. Its like a dry-run before the main event. I always treat each competition like its my last.

UA's goal is to get a 1st FIRST place at Wildcards. Right now I'm preparing for Network AND Firewall Regional level injects. I remember last year I started too late. This year I will be returning as a CCNA R&S and CCNA Security. I've improved on the Network front. I want to be Levi Ackerman level when March 13 hits.


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