Call for Merit and Fairness in CCDC Positions
Trend in CCDC Roster Makeup
I’ve noticed a trend in CCDC roster positions. Most of the time on a team women fall into three positions:1. Team Captain
2. Inject Manager/Policy Writer
3. Alternate
Team Size
0-1 women on a team
Why do I keep seeing this pattern over and over again? Where are the Firewall, Linux, Windows, Web, IoT, Network and Splunk Admins? Incident Responders? I don’t think every woman wants or asks to be in a leadership role. Are women encouraged into this structure by faculty coaches? Do all the guys on the team want admin positions and women get whatever is leftover? Do faculty coaches trust male ability in technical positions and assign the soft skill side to women on the team?
Why am I talking about this?
I’m hoping faculty coaches will see this post and rethink how they assign positions. Or they become aware that this is happening. I see the majority of teams meet the criteria up above.
How this happens
1. Grandfathering
"Since you were the Firewall Admin in 2018, you get to be the Firewall Admin in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022!"
Grandfathering is when someone on a team inherits a position from last year. Example: If I was Tri-C’s Web Admin in 2017, I could inherit the position again in 2018. I’m against year-by-year inheritance. Just because I’m the best Web Admin in 2017 doesn’t mean I’m the best Web Admin in 2018 that Tri-C had to offer. Schools should allow challengers and a student should defend their position. If they are truly the best, they have nothing to fear. Inheritance leads to complacency. Why should I study if I'm automatically the Web Admin next year?
2. Not a Merit-Based Team
The team is exclusive. Criteria to get on the team is vague.
Picking a team based on Merit and Fairness
Here are some ideas I have on picking a team:
1. Participation
2. Attendance in meetings
3. Work done and quality of Injects
4. Have a tryout for positions
5. People can lose their spot
Competition for Positions Layout
Team Captain
- Participate in a Mock-Interview with a CEO
- Complete Team Captain/Policy Injects beforehand
- Turn in a Resume.
- Make tools for the team
- Code a PHP website with MySQL backend
- Educate the team on web shells
- Complete Web and Linux related Injects before the competition
- Become an expert in Palo-Alto Command line
- Get a PA Certification
- Complete Firewall Injects beforehand
- Make your FW table before the event
- Attend Cisco 1-4 classes
- Get your CCENT after Cisco 2
- Make a booklet full of Cisco commands
- Complete Networking injects
- Educate the Team on a certain topic every meeting
- Make your own VMWare Environment from the ground-up. Important for FW and Network Admin esp.
- Cross-Train. A Web Admin should know Linux Administration too. Everyone on an end device should know iptables or Windows FW
Team Tryouts
Students will sign up for a certain position. For example you can have eight challengers for the Firewall spot. You can host a tryout event in where the competitors are given only FW injects. Whoever scores the highest based on participation, inject quality, and competition ranking has earned the FW spot.
"Our 2nd ranked FW Admin is really good and we only had one person interested in the Network spot and they are not trying! What should I do?" - Kick them off if they are not trying and give the 2nd ranked FW person the spot.
Individuals Rejected/Alternate for 2+ Years
This advice goes for both men and women. If your rejected for 2+ years, have a bad gut feeling, and want to participate in CCDC, ABANDON SHIP. Drive to your nearest community college and start a team. In Ohio you can be part-time for Qualifiers. Full-time will cost you between $1,500-$3,000. Take 6 credits in the first half semester and 6 credits in the second half semester. I was rejected for 2 years and jumped ship. I spent $1,771 for full-time tuition at $15/hour in 2018. I spent $3,500 in 2019. I did this in cash. I paid a premium since I live out of county for both Tri-C and Lakeland. My partner and I paid for the Regional trip ourselves.
You can do this! If your in this situation and need help, I'm here for you. CCDC is priceless and momentary. The person who decides who can and cannot participate is not a faculty coach or department chair, its you. Your time isn't over yet unless you say it is.
Closing
Teams should follow a merit-based format and end year by year inheritance. This will lead to stronger, fairer, more prepared teams.
I think you make some valid points about how teams are structured and the inherent pitfalls of them. I'm not sure what the best way is to get more women involved in technical roles would be, but it's a problem for the whole industry not just a CCDC one. There are not a lot of women in security/technical roles in most companies (though it's growing). The "grandfathering" problem is a tough one as it related to CCDC. With any team based sport/competition, the way people interact with each other and their ability to communicate can be more important than their raw skill level. That's one reason grandfathering happens a lot in all team sports/competitions. However there is a CCDC specific reason as well, there are "tricks" and "gotchas" inherent to the CCDC competition (regionals more than qualifiers) that are hard to pass along to other newer CCDC competitors. When I was blue team, I still remember trying to explain to our new network admin that the environment "in the room" will be way different than all our practices. Nothing prepares you better than being "in the room". That said, if the gap in skills is significant, you should people the more skilled person on the team. If possible, it would also be a very good idea to try to "force" some kind of mix with 6 returning people and 2 new people. That way you always have some additional experience being passed along and don't get hit with a year with 8 new people due to the entire team graduating.
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