CCDC is a competition for college students that exercises both technical and business skills. CCDC focuses on the operational aspects of managing and protecting an existing simulated corporate network infrastructure. Your team will be securing, managing, and maintaining a small business network – responding to business tasks called injects while a live Red Team that is attempting to break into your systems, and maintaining a core group of “critical services” for the simulated business.

Teams are comprised of up to eight students and a school staff/faculty sponsor, or Coach. For Southwest CCDC, teams typically register and start practicing in winter. Registration usually closes at the end of January. The Southwest regional qualifier event is held mid-February. The qualifier event is usually half a day long and the top eight teams move on to the regional event held in March. The team who wins the Southwest CCDC regional, advances on to the National CCDC event, usually held in April.

Looking for how to start a team? Check out the youtube video below. National CCDC has put together this information packet on starting a team. The official rules are an important part of the game, and we suggest you reveiw them in detail. Additionally, Rob Fuller, a.k.a. Mubix, has put together a github repo called “how to win CCDC” which can be found here.

Also be sure to follow @SWCCDC and @NationalCCDC on twitter for updates!