NVC Students Compete in National Cybersecurity Competition

Northwest Vista College (NVC) students in the Information Security and Assurance program will compete in the National Cyber League (NCL) online challenges October 20-21 and November 3-5. NCL is nationally recognized by the cyber industry as hands-on training to practice and validate skills for use in the workplace.

This is the first time NVC will participate in the challenge, and will have both team and individuals in the competitions. The 20 students competing for the “NVC Wildcats” lineup are Debbie Nielsen, Andrea Belmar, RJ Saucedo, Damaris Vazquez, Megan Canales, Sam Gonzales, Jimmy Tenorio, Zachary Jenkins, Erik Morales, Erika Lopez, Kaylie Jones, Tristan Calvert, Bryan Zuniga, Nathan Villa, Paulina Luna, Iverson McCray, Matt Burch III, Isaiah Terrazas, Angel Chavez, and Sophia Herrera. 

“We plan to go as far as we can for our first year at the NCL,” said program coordinator Matthew Burch. “That’s why we have well-attended training camps every week to go over competition categories like password cracking and encryption.”

Burch said information security impacts everyone. Therefore, the Department of Defense (DOD) and other government agencies have come together to decide the best practices in detection and protection and to create the standards for curriculum in the field.

The cybersecurity program at NVC received grant of $1.5 million from the DOD of guaranteed funding for three years with the possibility of two more. This grant helps NVC provide students with scholarships, internships, and competition fees, such as the NCL Challenge.

Texas is number three in the nation for information security analyst employment levels. National salaries for an entry level cyber security analyst with an associate’s degree is $66,286 – $69,879, according to Salary.com. And for students who continue on to a bachelor’s degree, the entry-level wage in the Alamo region is $75,017. The career field is expected to grow 32% (much faster than average) according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the last year, Cyber Seek reports there were over 50,000 cybersecurity online job listings for Texas.

Cyber-competitions allow students to validate their knowledge and skills using real-world scenarios. NCL officially partners with CompTIA, the leader in vendor-neutral technical education and certifications for the world’s technology workforce.

NCL participants compete in nine domains that include cryptography, password cracking, and forensics. According to the NCL website, students prepare and test themselves against practical cybersecurity challenges that they will likely face in the workforce, such as identifying hackers from forensic data, pentesting and auditing vulnerable websites, and recovering from ransomware attacks.

“Students receive a scorecard at the event displaying their accuracy and completion percentages for each domain, as well as shareable score reports to use on LinkedIn and in resumes. NCL scorecards are well-respected in the cybersecurity world,” said Burch.