{"id":177709,"date":"2026-01-13T10:27:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T15:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/13\/top-cybersecurity-students-across-the-globe-face-off-at-rits-pentesting-competition\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T16:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T21:55:13","slug":"top-cybersecurity-students-across-the-globe-face-off-at-rits-pentesting-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/13\/top-cybersecurity-students-across-the-globe-face-off-at-rits-pentesting-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Top cybersecurity students across the globe face-off at RIT\u2019s pentesting competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top cybersecurity students across the globe face-off at RIT\u2019s pentesting competition<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.rit.edu\/news\/top-cybersecurity-students-across-globe-face-rits-pentesting-competition<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-01-13 10:27:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.rit.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe best cybersecurity students in the world came to Rochester Institute of Technology to battle in the\u00a0Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition\u00a0(CPTC) global finals Jan. 9-11. The event wrapped up the largest offense-based cybersecurity competition for college students, which was created by RIT.<\/p>\n

A team of students from University of California, Irvine took home the CPTC trophy for 2026. Princess Sumaya University for Technology (Jordan) placed second and University of Massachusetts, Amherst placed third.<\/p>\n

At the competition, 12 teams used white hat hacking skills to break into fabricated computer networks, evaluate their weak points, and present plans to better secure them. The pentesting competition helps students build and hone the skills for a career in cybersecurity\u2014an industry with a severe shortage of qualified professionals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that sets CPTC apart from other competitions is the immersive mindset and realism\u2014it\u2019s as close as it gets to real-world pentesting,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0Justin Pelletier, director of CPTC and director of RIT\u2019s ESL GCI Cyber Range and Training Center. \u201cSince the beginning, we have been very innovative in the competition scene to include things like business communications\u2014because if you can\u2019t deliver your findings in a way that\u2019s actionable and understandable to the client, then it\u2019s not an effective pentest.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this year\u2019s scenario, teams conducted a pentest for a cruise operator, testing both shipboard weaknesses\u2014including a limited IT staff, high workload, and inconsistent patching\u2014and high-level corporate risks, such as remote control platforms and Security Operations Center visibility.<\/p>\n

Judges from the security industry evaluated the performance of competitors. Professionalism\u2014along with technical findings, presentations, and reports\u2014play a key role in scoring well.<\/p>\n

Throughout the fall, more than 400 elite cybersecurity students from 70 schools gathered at seven regional events across the world. The top 12 collegiate teams from regionals and wildcard competitions were selected for the weekend-long 2026 CPTC global finals. Participating teams included:<\/p>\n

\tAl Hussein Technical University (Jordan)
\n\tBrigham Young University
\n\tCalifornia State Polytechnic University, Pomona
\n\tDakota State University
\n\tPrincess Sumaya University for Technology (Jordan)
\n\tRochester Institute of Technology
\n\tStanford University
\n\tUniversity of California, Irvine
\n\tUniversity of Central Florida
\n\tUniversity of Florida
\n\tUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst
\n\tUniversity of New Haven<\/p>\n

The competition environment was run through RIT\u2019s ESL\u00a0Global Cybersecurity Institute\u00a0(GCI) Cyber Range and Training Center, which is capable of hosting more than 5,000 virtual machines for immersive scenarios. Students also have the opportunity to meet experts, hand out r\u00e9sum\u00e9s, and interview with potential employers.<\/p>\n

CPTC takes the next step<\/p>\n

After 11 years of growth through RIT, the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition is moving forward as an independent, nonprofit organization. The transition will allow more schools to host and further grow the event\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n

In 2015, RIT\u2019s Department of Computing Security faculty created CPTC in order to fill a gap in the competition space. Bill Stackpole, who is now a retired professor of cybersecurity, explained that while different kinds of cyber competitions did exist at the time, they were constrained and didn\u2019t offer realistic experiences.<\/p>\n

The RIT professors wanted an event that put students in front of infrastructure and made them responsible for it. Competitors would be graded on the practicality of their work, including red team activities and explaining defensive actions.<\/p>\n

As a leader in the cybersecurity industry, Bob Kalka \u201989 (computer science), vice president of IBM\u2019s Security Business Unit at the time, saw the need too. With support from IBM and RIT\u2019s Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, the first competition took place with nine teams in 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first one was messy, but it grew like gangbusters,\u201d said Stackpole. \u201cEveryone wanted to participate, but no one was willing to build it. So, we built it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over 11 competitions, CPTC has grown to include regional events and international universities.<\/p>\n

\u201cCreating something like this really depends on having all the right people in the room at the same time,\u201d said Stackpole. \u201cWe had faculty who were willing to invest the time above and beyond, management to support the event, and a vision for where it was going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to building support for RIT\u2019s cybersecurity degree programs, CPTC has taught students from many colleges what they need to know to be successful in the security industry.<\/p>\n

For Sunggwan Choi \u201920 (computing security), CPTC helped him land a job. He said that CPTC forces students to develop in several key areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re constantly pushing into new technical domains, learning enumeration and exploitation techniques, building your soft skills so you can communicate technical work to both technical and non-technical audiences, and figuring out how to work effectively as a team,\u201d Choi said.<\/p>\n

Choi was a member of RIT\u2019s second place finishing team in 2020 and captain of the first-place team in 2021. After his first finals competition, he was approached by IBM Security representatives for a summer internship with X-Force Red. He was eventually hired by IBM full time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they were impressed by the debrief presentation, communicating skills during the competition, and the Linux\/Windows hacking cheat sheet that I open sourced specifically for CPTC,\u201d said Choi.<\/p>\n

Today, Choi lives in Korea and works as a red team operator at Samsung Electronics, focusing on adversary simulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe folks at CPTC try to represent realistic scenarios,\u201d said Choi. \u201cSometimes the client could get defensive, push back, or even get angry at your work. Simulating these types of difficult business situations helped me to adapt fast in real-world consulting when I first started my job.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Top cybersecurity students across the globe face-off at RIT\u2019s pentesting competition https:\/\/www.rit.edu\/news\/top-cybersecurity-students-across-globe-face-rits-pentesting-competition Publish Date: 2026-01-13…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":177710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.rit.edu\/sites\/rit.edu\/files\/styles\/full\/https\/cdn.rit.edu\/images\/news\/2026-01\/WEB_Cybersecurity_Competition.jpg?itok=MX9sAOlc","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-177709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177711,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177709\/revisions\/177711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}