FITSEC Team Takes 5th at NCL Tournament

The L3Harris Institute for Assured Information (L3HIAI) FITSEC cybersecurity competition team placed fifth at the National Cyber League Team Tournament this month, marking six straight top 10 finishes.

Tournament results are provisional and will be confirmed on Friday, Nov. 10.

Running over a period of 72 hours, the tournament challenges students to apply practice-based cybersecurity techniques against different domains of cybersecurity, including network forensics, exploitation and cryptography.

Teams typically complete a challenge by discovering a vulnerability in a service or application. They are then graded on the number of challenges they solve and how accurately they solved them.

“To earn fifth place, our leading group solved 141 challenges in the 72 hours with 95.9% accuracy,” says assistant professor TJ O’Connor, primary FITSEC faculty advisor and director of Florida Tech’s cyber operations program.

Five FITSEC teams competed in the tournament, with a total of 40 Florida Tech students participating. Chandler Hake, a computer science student, captained the fifth-place team, which also included previous national champions Curtice Gough and Alex Schmith, and computer science students Louis Orcinolo, John Sellock, Lilith Fort and Marcus Feliciano.

“I am incredibly proud of our students,” says O’Connor. “This group, led by graduating senior Chandler Hake, is a group of very talented students who will go on to serve in critical roles defending cybersecurity assets worldwide. I am continually impressed and humbled by these students, who excel in competition and the classroom and look forward to seeing their contributions as they graduate.”

The teams express their gratitude to L3HIAI, professor and L3HIAI executive director Marco Carvalho, Folliard Alumni Center and Florida Tech for their help and support.