Students Compete to Mount Best Defense Against Malicious Hackers

Brandon Hladysh's business was in trouble. Mr. Hladysh, a junior at Baker College of Flint, in southern Michigan, was supposed to be managing the computer network of a small company, but hackers had attacked, and several of his computer servers were down. In a battle with unseen enemies on the network, Mr. Hladysh and his colleagues thought they were losing.

It was scant consolation that the struggle wasn't real. It was the end of the first day of the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, held last month in San Antonio.

The Baker College group was one of 56 teams that had entered state and regional contests this spring. "It's sort of like March Madness, but with computers," said the competition's director, Dwayne E. Williams, an assistant director of the Center for Information Assurance and Security, at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The top six, including Mr. Hladysh's team, had been flown to San Antonio for the national finals, with tickets paid for largely by a grant from the Department of Homeland Security.

The need for colleges to graduate students who understand computer security is growing. The Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership of the FBI; the National White Collar Crime Center; and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, in the Department of Justice, reported more than 90,000 crimes in 2007, with reported financial losses of almost $240-million. The goal of the competition is to increase interest in computer security and improve training for network defenders.