Illinois team wins top honors at sixth annual Deloitte Foundation Cyber Threat Competition

3/7/2020 Joseph Park, Illinios ECE

A team of four Illinois students including Nicholas Rappe (BS CompE '23) took first place at the 2020 Deloitte Foundation Cyber Threat Competition.

Written by Joseph Park, Illinios ECE

According to a story from PR Newswire, a team of students from the University of Illinois won the 2020 Deloitte Foundation Cyber Threat Competition for "presenting the best analysis and incident response approach to a simulated cyberattack." Nicholas Rappe (BS CompE '23) was joined by three Gies students in taking first place amongst over 650 students from 15 competing universities.

From left to right: Michelle Liu (Deloitte Cyber), Grace Nie (U of I Student), Lucas Wang (U of I Student), Nick Rappe (U of I Student), Jeremy Pietrowski (U of I Student), Jordyn Cosme (Deloitte Cyber), Anthony Russo (Deloitte Cyber Principal) (Photo cred to PR NewsWire)
From left to right: Michelle Liu (Deloitte Cyber), Grace Nie (U of I Student), Lucas Wang (U of I Student), Nick Rappe (U of I Student), Jeremy Pietrowski (U of I Student), Jordyn Cosme (Deloitte Cyber), Anthony Russo (Deloitte Cyber Principal) (Photo cred to PR NewsWire)

The most competitive year to date, the Deloitte Foundation Cyber Threat Competition is designed and facilitated by Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory's Cyber practice to engage students in the business and technology dimensions of cyber risk.

"The cyber talent gap is a significant challenge for organizations and governments, alike. Recent graduates joining the workforce who are equipped with cybersecurity skills as well as business acumen can be set up for future career success," said John Rooney, principal, Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP and Deloitte Foundation board member.

Launched in the fall of 2019, the two-round competition came to a close on February 22, 2020. The first round consisted of testing the students' breadth of business and technical understanding of cyber. Following the first round, the top-scoring students from each school formed a team and were invited to Deloitte University (Westlake, Texas) to represent their school and compete in the Cyber Incident Response Simulation - the final round. The competition concluded with team presentations to a "mock executive team" made of leaders from Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory's cyber practice.

"Giving students experiential learning opportunities is one of the hallmarks of the Deloitte Foundation's mission to better prepare future talent. The Deloitte Foundation recognizes the need to both close the cybersecurity skills gap and to expand the bench strength of the future workforce."

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This story was published March 7, 2020.