The University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) cyber competition team has advanced to the Final Four of the first-ever Hack the Madness competition. The UMGC team claimed victory against local rival Bowie State University in the Elite Eight round on March 15.
The virtual competition, sponsored by cybersecurity upskilling and workforce development platform Hack the Box, is modeled after the NCAA basketball tournament, starting with 64 teams from universities across the United States and organized in regional brackets. With its victory over Bowie State, the UMGC team emerged as champions of the East Region. The team faces University of Central Florida in the Final Four on April 5.
The other two regional champions are Arizona State University and Western Governors University.
“The categories covered in the inaugural Hack the Madness event reflect the real-world skills students need to gain experience for the workplace,” said Jesse Varsalone, collegiate associate professor of cybersecurity technology at UMGC and coach of the cyber competition team. “Reverse engineering, hacking, forensics and hardware hacking—skills included in the competition—all help protect computer systems and networks from cyber threats.”
The UMGC team consisted of two graduate students (Peter Miller and Jared Ellerbee, cyber operations) and four undergraduate students (Maxwell Troisi-Rauschenberger, Brandon Wright and Gabriel Katlic in cybersecurity technology, and Rikka Starborne, East Asian studies).
“This team demonstrates that UMGC is truly global,” said Varsalone. “Players representing the U.S., England and Japan helped secure the win.”
In Round 1 of the East Region, the UMGC team faced off against a team from Robert Morris University and scored 3,825, fourth overall out of the 64 teams. In Round 2, the UMGC team scored 3,000 points to claim victory over Virginia Commonwealth University. In round 3, the “Sweet Sixteen,” the team scored 2,150 to defeat the University of Maryland Baltimore County before beating Bowie State University.
Established in 2012, the UMGC cybersecurity team comprises students, alumni and faculty who compete regularly in digital forensics, penetration testing and computer network defense scenarios that help them gain experience to advance their cybersecurity careers. To prepare for competitions, students detect and combat cyberattacks in the university’s Virtual Security Lab and work through case studies in an online classroom.
The UMGC team has earned numerous honors, including championships in local, national and international competitions. In addition to several top-three finishes in the Maryland Cyber Challenge, UMGC won the gold medal in the 2014 Global CyberLympics and took first place in 2015 in the inaugural DiploHack competition sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. UMGC also won a Silver Award in the 2016 National Cyber Analyst Challenge and finished third in the 2022 Maritime and Control Systems Cybersecurity Con Hack the Port competition.
About University of Maryland Global Campus
UMGC was founded more than 75 years ago specifically to serve the higher education needs of working adults and military servicemembers. Today, UMGC is the largest provider of postsecondary education in Maryland and continues its global tradition with online and hybrid courses, more than 175 classroom and service locations worldwide, and more than 135 degrees and certificates backed by the reputation of a state university and the University System of Maryland. For more information, visit umgc.edu.
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