2025 CCDC Results
All CCDC Competitors
CCDC Group Picture
Minnesota State IT Center of Excellence held the 2024 Minnesota State Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on January 25, 2025. Alexandria Tech and Community College hosted the Minnesota event, and eight teams from across the State participated. Sponsors included Abbott, WiSP Services. LLC, and Gardonville Cooperative Telephone Associate.
Over 100 students from 10 different Minnesota higher education institutions joined this year for a full day of competition and learning. Along with students, faculty and industry members participated as advisors, sponsors, and Red Team (Ethical Hackers/Penetration Experts).
In a controlled virtual environment, CCDC competitors assume administrative and protective duties for an existing “commercial” network – typically a small company with 50+ users, 7 to 10 servers, and standard Internet services such as a web server, mail server, and e-commerce site. Each team begins the competition with an identical set of hardware and software and is scored on their ability to detect and respond to outside threats, maintain the availability of existing services such as mail servers and web servers, respond to business requests such as the addition or removal of additional services, and balance security needs against business needs.
Throughout the competition, an automated scoring engine periodically verifies each team’s services' functionality and availability, and traffic generators feed simulated user traffic into the competition network. A volunteer Red Team (Ethical Hackers) provides the “external threat” of all Internet-based services, which allows the teams to match their defensive skills against live opponents (hackers).
WINNERS
The top teams will advance to Regionals (1st place) while the 2nd and 3rd place teams receive one more opportunity to advance through the Regional Wildcard. The top two teams at the Regional Wildcard will also move on to the Regional Competition.
1st Place – St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN
St. Cloud team
2nd Place – Metro State University, Saint Paul, MN
Metro State Team
3rd Place – Minnesota State University, Mankato, Mankato, MN
Minnesota State Mankato Team
4th Place – Dunwoody College of Technology, Minneapolis, MN
Other Participating Teams: Alex Technical and Community College, Alexandria, MN, Century College, White Bear Lake, MN, Lake Superior College, Duluth, MN, Minneapolis College (MCTC), Minneapolis, MN, Minnesota State Community and Technical College with MN State U, Moorhead, Moorhead, MN; and Pine Technical and Community College, Pine City, MN.
MN State IT Center of Excellence would like to share a special thank you to our Event Sponsor, Abbott, our 2025 keynote speaker Mark Lanterman (https://compforensics.com/leadership/mark-lanterman/). This event would not have been successful without their financial support.
The Center would also like to thank Steve Richards, Co-Director and Host from Alexandria Tech; Brian Potter, Shane Hamberg, Andy Erickson, and Rusty Klinefelter - Chief Judge; Shad Brown, Red Team Lead; all the Red Team volunteers, Jeremy Scribner and Miquel Gonzalez, Super Site Judges from Alexandria Tech; Melissa Rousu, MN IT COE; and Janice Aanenson, State CCDC Director and Executive Director of the MN State IT Center of Excellence.
