IIT undergraduate Information Technology and Management (ITM) student Eric Tendian competed in the Cyber Aces State Championship offered by the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES). The competition featured the top 125 participants from a year-long competition led by Gov. Pat Quinn to identify individuals with skills conducive to seeking a cybersecurity career in the military or private sector.

The competition included NetWars, a simulation utilized by the U.S. Air Force, and a discussion of ethics. NetWars covers topics including system hardening, packet analysis, digital forensics, and vulnerability assessment. The ethics panel consisted of two cybersecurity professionals and one FBI agent in the cyber division, and was facilitated by a former White House-level IT manager.

Eric won two awards in the NetWars tournament – he scored 2nd Overall and was the first to advance to Level 2. Eric was among only 3 participants in the Illinois competition to make it to Level 3 and was the only non-professional to finish in the top 3. Even more impressive is that Eric is a first-year IIT student.

Bill Slater, Adjunct Industry Professor of Information Technology and Management, encouraged Eric to participate in the competition because of his strong cyber security skills. Professor Slater stated “it is impressive that one of our IIT ITM undergraduate students placed 2nd in the state. Especially since Eric competed against cyber security professionals and students with more years of cyber security experience.”

Eric was featured as a 2013 Fifty For The Future award winner from the Illinois Technology Foundation that recognizes 50 of the brightest technology students in Illinois.
Several other IIT students participated in the competition. See the complete results of the Cyber Aces Online course, the precursor to NetWars, at https://online.cyberaces.org/event/results/2013Fall/0?state=IL&regtype=College.

Registration for the next round of Cyber Aces Online opens August 1st.

More info on the championship can be found at http://www.cyberaces.org/championships/ and http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/suburbs/palos/chi-illinois-hacking-competition-draws-cybersecurity-sleuths-of-tomorrow-20140302,0,4349193.story.