Cyber security is one of the largest concerns in the United States and around the world. Companies such as Target and Sony have been hacked in recent years with large amounts of information such as credit cards and social security numbers falling into the wrong hands.

A group of ISU students is on track to help fight those cyber attacks.

Five ISU students majoring in computer science or computer engineering competed in the first National Cyber Analyst Competition sponsored by Lockheed Martin and Temple University. The competition was split into three phases, the third landing the team in Washington, D.C.

For the first phase, a case study was sent to the group on a flash drive. The case involved a fictional company that was attacked, and the group was tasked with investigating the intrusion.

“We tried to figure out how [the intruders] got in and what this person took — pretty much all the relevant information we would give to the CEO of the company that got attacked,” said Sambhav Srirama, senior in computer science and one of the team members. “We constructed the presentation and sent it back to Lockheed Martin, and they evaluated every school’s presentation to see if we qualified to participate in the second and third phases.”

The second phase was a training step in which the teams learned how cyber defense specialists would have handled the first phase if the case was presented to them. This gave the team some valuable information that could be used in the third phase.

“Preparation was a huge factor in the third phase because you didn’t have time to learn how to use a tool, you had to know how to use it right then,” said Matt Brown, graduate assistant in electrical and computer engineering.

Each team — including Iowa State’s — was flown to Washington, D.C. for the third and final phase Nov. 30. The team had five hours to go through another case study to figure out if another intrusion had anything to do with the intrusion the team studied in the first phase.

After the five hours had passed, the team had 30 minutes to assemble a presentation it would give to explain what it found and what it got out of it.

“The results were determined entirely by the presentation,” said Jason Johnson, graduate assistant in political science and computer engineering. “Most teams ran out of time in their presentations, so the fact that we figured out what was most important to find and present that correctly was a major factor.”

The team finished in first place and won $25,000 as a result, which will be split evenly among Srirama, Brown, Johnson and two other participants, Steffanie Bisinger and Angela McMahon.

“I think in the long run, what got us the win was teamwork,” Srirama said. “In the weeks leading up to the competition, we all tried to learn a new tool. We all tried to learn something new that we got out of phase two [so] when when we got into phase three we weren’t all working on the same thing during those five hours.”

Srirama, Brown and Johnson all look forward to opportunities in the cyber analysis and information assurance field. Brown said he recently accepted a job with Lockheed Martin, and Srirama said several companies have expressed interest in him.

A date for next year’s competition has yet to be selected.