A group of Security Deamons students from DePaul University's College of Computing and Digital Media took the top spot in the Midwest and second place nationally among 26 teams competing in the first annual National Cyber League (NCL) competition.  They were headed by freshman Ryan Haley and coached by instructor Jean-Philippe Labruyère.

The 2012 NCL Championship featured face-to-face, head-to-head cyber competition combining a “capture the flag” exercise–where teams play both the offensive and defensive roles at the same time–with digital forensics exercises.

Graduate student Christopher Alexander was co-captain of the DePaul team, which also included James Espinosa Jr., Ian T. McCathy, David Berg, Joe Hartmann, Matt Hallagann and Jeremiah Bailey.

The NCL was founded in 2011 with the goal of providing a training ground for college students to practice and hone their cyber-security skills though combined individual and team exercises.  The competition promotes the continued acquisition of skills tied to curriculum, industry needs, and professional certifications and provides a mechanism by which schools and students can assess the effectiveness of their curriculum.