News
Justin Pelletier

A team of RIT cybersecurity students is moving on to the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC) after taking first place at the Northeast regional competition March 20–22. The students pulled together a win, despite having to compete from separate locations across the country, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

WROC-TV reports on the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition finals, held at RIT.

RIT computing security lecturer Justin Pelletier is back to his regular office hours this semester, after taking part in a six-month-long military tour in Afghanistan earlier this year. As an Army Reserve counterintelligence officer, Pelletier traveled across Afghanistan and was based in the special operations headquarters, helping to assess and counter foreign threats.

The winners of the world’s largest collegiate offensive-based cybersecurity competition will be crowned at the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition finals Nov. 22–24 at RIT.

Cybercrime is costing the world trillions of dollars, and analysts say that there aren’t enough qualified professionals to prevent those attacks. To address this problem, RIT is creating the Global Cybersecurity Institute (GCI), aimed at meeting the demand for computing security and artificial intelligence professionals, while developing future technologies, protocols and human understanding needed to address the global cybersecurity crisis.