America's National Cyber League (NCL) has published official college rankings for the very first time, and the University of Nevada has come out on top.
Cyber-savvy students at the Reno-based university prevailed against 5,026 students from 419 schools across the nation to achieve victory in the NCL's spring 2019 season. This impressive win contributed heavily to Nevada's securing the pole position on the inaugural NCL leaderboard published last week.
In second place was the University of Hawaii at Manoa, followed by California State University at Chico, which took third. Lingering at the bottom of the board in 100th place was Grossmont College, a community college in California.
The NCL has been challenging high school and college students to demonstrate their cybersecurity skills by taking part in two cybersecurity competitions staged annually since 2011. Entrants step onto a virtual field of competition to solve a series of puzzles based on real-world scenarios.
Previous challenges included identifying hackers from forensic data, breaking into simulated bank websites, and staging a recovery from a ransomware attack. The University of Nevada's winning team, the Nevada Cyber Club, completed all the challenges set in this year's spring season with 99.26% accuracy.
Club member and computer science and engineering major Bryson Lingenfelter, speaking after his team's unequivocal victory, said: "I've learned a tremendous amount in three seasons of competing in NCL, and it's a major inspiration for my plans going forward with Cyber Club. NCL is how many of us got started with the club, and I hope to expand our use of competitions as learning tools in the future to engage even more people with cybersecurity."
Competing in the NCL does more for students than simply give them a chance to vaunt their talent and learn new skills. Thanks to industry-leading cybersecurity skills-evaluation technology from Cyber Skyline, NCL competitors can obtain scouting reports of their performance, which they can use for hiring purposes.
"Cyber competitions like NCL provide a way for cybersecurity students to demonstrate their skills to employers, especially with many entry-level jobs requiring experience," said Franz Payer, CEO of Cyber Skyline.
"The new Cyber Power Rankings highlight the top schools producing new cybersecurity professionals. We're excited for what competitions can do to help address the cyber talent shortage.