National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition Champions Tour DC

By Nightwing

Nightwing Hosts Alamo Cup Victors from UC Irvine

At the end of a busy three days for UC Irvine’s Cyber@UCI cybersecurity club, the students gathered for one last dinner with the team from Nightwing, their hosts for a whirlwind tour of the nation’s capital. As the winners of this year’s National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC), the team earned a September victory lap through Washington, DC. But the tour was about much more than sightseeing and nice dinners. The days were packed with visits to the agencies responsible for defending the United States’ cybersecurity perimeter and protecting national interests. There, students had the rare opportunity to network with some of the leading talents in digital security and to better understand the career avenues available in the government, military, and commercial arenas.

Nightwing’s Claudia Suarez, who spent months arranging the tour for the NCCDC victors, had a clear vision for what she hoped the students would take away from the experience.

“I wanted them to get the valuable insights all the agencies and customers are able to share with them. It’s not something that the public typically has access to.”

A Constellation of Experts

The first step on the tour took the team to the United States Secret Service, where they visited with representatives from the Global Investigative Operations Center and Cyber Investigations Section. They also had the opportunity to see the agency’s Forensics Services Division Lab. Beyond protecting presidents, the Secret Service also guards the integrity of currency and investigates crimes against the US financial system committed by criminals around the world and in cyberspace.

Next, the UC Irvine team headed to the Central Intelligence Agency, learning how agents and analysts collect information and protect information from adversaries. The CIA routinely researches the threat landscape and shores up the nation’s defenses against risks of all kinds, including cyberattacks.

Eddie Zhu said, “I enjoyed hearing how each of the cybersecurity departments talk about their collaboration with the rest of the departments—seeing that interconnectivity and where they overlap. And not just that, but with the private sector, as well. I found that really interesting, to be able to see across the departments and how much they actually work together in tandem to solve the investigations they’re on.”

Day two of the NCCDC winner’s tour kicked off with a trip to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Crimes Center, commonly known as C3, responsible for coordinating investigations of cyber-related activity including forensic, intelligence, and investigative support.

From there, they moved to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the agency overseeing national efforts to manage and reduce risk to cyber and physical infrastructure. The stop at the Department of Defense gave the team the chance to tour the iconic Pentagon building in Arlington, Va. and hear from the professionals charged with military use of cyber.

Team captain Akshay Rohatgi commented, “I think the Department of Defense was my favorite, talking about cyber policy with the Colonel we met. I don’t really get to have a lot of these discussions on my own. Seeing that important people care about these things and see the value in it gave me a different perspective.”

On the final day of the tour, the students traveled to Fort Meade, Md., where they heard from the cybersecurity experts at the National Security Agency’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center and learned how the NSA partners with private enterprises to defend their systems against cyberattacks. After three days moving between agencies, students had greater insight into the scope of scale of their various missions.

“I think it’s a really great opportunity to see a glimpse of the inner working and the potential pathways in cybersecurity,” commented Athena Winn.

“This has really widened my perspective on how the public sector works,” said Kristen Chung, “and how cybersecurity aligns with that.”

Not All Work

Visiting the District of Columbia didn’t only involve hearing from our country’s cyber defenders. Nightwing also treated the NCCDC victors to some fun along the way. They got to stretch their legs while visiting many of the capital’s famous national monuments such as the Jefferson, Lincoln, and Iwo Jima Memorials. They also went undercover for a while at the International Spy Museum, getting to see the tools of real and imagined spy craft like the Enigma codebreaking machine and James Bond’s Aston Martin.

On their tour of the United State Capital Building, Congressman Dave Min of California’s 47th District—a former law professor at UC Irvine—was kind enough to visit with the students and offer his congratulations on their NCCDC victory.

Cyber Skills to Protect Our Future

The National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition is the premier collegiate cybersecurity event in the United States, designed to hone and showcase the skills of the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Nearly 200 schools and more than 1,500 students participated in the 2025 tournament series. Established in 2005, the NCCDC brings together student teams from across the country, who are tasked with defending a fictional network infrastructure from a team of professional “red team” attackers. Teams must maintain the day-to-day operations of the organization, performing everyday tasks while fending off constant attacks. Competitors are judged based on their ability to detect and respond to outside threats, maintain existing network services, respond to business and customer requests, and balance security needs against business needs in real time. This hands-on experience is invaluable, as it mirrors the challenges faced by cybersecurity experts in the field. The competition emphasizes not only technical proficiency but also critical thinking, teamwork, and communication, as participants must balance security with operational demands.

Congratulations to the 2025 UC Irvine team on their win of the NCCDC Alamo Cup: Akshay Rohatgi, Kristen Chung, Andy Gu, Dhruv Kandula, Jacob Lee, Eric Liu, Steven Ngo, Christopher Young, Athena Winn, Edward Zhu, and Logan Mifflin.

Kevin Archer, Technical Director with the NCCDC, joined the students on the tour and commented on the opportunity associated with participating in the competition, “I think industry, government—they all recognize the fact that these students often are using their own time to learn this stuff, to become super-aware of security, and that just makes them much more unique than the average student because instead of just going out all night, they’re coding, they’re hardening systems. They’re practicing in order to be the best.”

Additional photos from the 2025 NCCDC Winner’s Tour can be viewed on Flickr.

This article first appeared from Nightwing. See the full article on LinkedIn.