Racks of computers, piles of candy and gallons of Mountain Dew indicated a computer competition.

The first-ever High School Cyber Defense Competition took place from 7 p.m. Friday to 10 p.m. Saturday.

Each team of high school students was responsible for designing a computer network that would keep hackers from attacking their servers and the services they were providing – in real time – to other users in the building.

The event was an effort to gain prospective students in the ISU information technology program.

“We’re looking to get people interested in information technology and the programs that we have at Iowa State,” said Thomas Daniels, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Our graduate numbers are not able to fulfill the number of job openings in this field and we’re trying to get prospective students to consider this area when they enter college.”

Daniels said people have become skeptical of the information technology field because of all of the publicity about outsourcing.

“You never, ever outsource your security. It is just too important to trust it to people who are not close to your company. This is where we are seeing the most growth in the technology field,” said Doug Jacobson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Jacobson specializes in network security in Iowa State’s department of electrical and computer engineering.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the engineering computer software field is predicted to grow more than 30 percent from 2002 to 2012 in Iowa alone.

“We saw a slight downturn in enrollment numbers in 2000, but it has picked back up,” Jacobson said. “Even with healthy numbers in our program, we are still not getting enough people to fulfill all the positions in the state.”

Students at the competition came from all over Iowa, even as far as Camanche, which is on the Iowa-Illinois border.

“We sent out an invitation to high schools. Some did it through their talented and gifted programs, but most pulled teams together from nothing,” Jacobson said. “We were amazed by the response and really, really pleased.”

Daniels said students ran a network that is providing services such as e-mail and other common networking applications. Then Iowa State’s “Red Team,” which is comprised mostly of ISU graduate students, used “ethical hacking” methods to disrupt their network operation. The students were then responsible for finding ways to repair their network and keep them functional.

Daniels said the best way to get people interested in this field is to give them a chance to try it out firsthand.

Students from Camanche had just begun at 7:25 p.m. Friday.

“We are supposed to be researching ways to fix our network if we encounter a problem,” said Dan Lind, Camanche high school freshman.

“We had some training to prepare for the event, but we don’t know what to expect. I’m just happy to get to try this out.”

The competition had several corporate sponsors, the biggest of them being ACT, Inc., the Iowa testing corporation.

“We were lucky to get ACT as a sponsor. They donated three computers for each team and after the competition the computers will be donated to the respective teams’ high school,” Daniels said.

The event took place at Iowa State’s Internet-Scale Event and Attack Generation Environment at the ISU Research Park. The facility’s goal is to provide a virtual Internet for the purpose of researching and testing cyber-defense mechanisms and is a one-of-a-kind facility designed to make computing safer.

“ISEAGE is the perfect environment for a competition like this and this competition is a small scale example of what the system of capable of doing,” Daniels said. “We are creating a sort of Internet within the Internet, allowing us to simulate Internet activity in a controlled environment.”