North Carolina National Guard hosts cybersecurity competition at East Carolina University
North Carolina National Guard hosts cybersecurity competition at East Carolina University
Publish Date: 2026-01-16 18:11:00
Source Domain: wcti12.com
Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. The North Carolina National Guard hosted a cybersecurity competition for students at East Carolina University. The event started at 1:00 p.m. and is ongoing until 8:00 p.m. later this evening.Students not only get the chance to gain real technical experience but got to hear from professionals. News 12 was there to learn about today’s cyber threats and how the National Guard responds to them.It’s not about the money its about here and here and why you’re doing this.The next generation of cybersecurity specialists at East Carolina University is gaining insight into a rapidly changing industryThe North Carolina National Guard is working with ECU to create a competition around defending and responding to cyber attacks.For Lieutenant Colonel Seth Barun, the first step to countering threats online is through awareness.The more eyes on it the more secure we are. Some of the stuff we’re going to see today as part of the competition we take straight from the real world and we bring in.Students will face simulated attacks based on situations the National Guard will give them hands-on technical training. But the NC National Guard does more than just defend their own network. They also help North Carolina cities recover from attacks and recognize threats before they happen.We have an incident response mission going on right now where a town in North Carolina was hit with a ransomware attack. So, we have four people there on the ground helping the town figure out what happened and recover from that.Since 2016, when Lieutenant Colonel Barun received his degree in cybersecurity, he has seen the frequency of online attacks happening much quicker with the help of artificial intelligence.We used to have more there would be an exploit or vulnerability discovered, and you had a couple days but now with AI we’re seeing it happen almost as soon as the vulnerability is discovered an attack happens.But he also believes AI brings benefits to security as well.We have advanced tools now using AI like next generation antivirus that works more on behavior than signatures so the defense tools are getting better maybe not as fast as the attackers, but we are getting better.Lieutenant Colonel Barun hopes to expand the competition in the future to cover multiple schools at once.
