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Members of the CU Cyber Team with their first place finish at the 2026 Rocky Mountain Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.��

A team of CU Boulder computer science students earned first place at the��. This also marks the team’s first time qualifying for the��.

The key focus of the CCDC, sponsored by the National Security Agency, is to simulate a business under cyberattacks.��

During the competition, teams act as the cybersecurity staff for a simulated company, defending against live attacks from professional hackers while ensuring that critical business systems like a company’s e-commerce website and email platform remain fully operational.

Throughout the 16-hour regional competition, teams were evaluated on their ability to maintain system uptime, detect and respond to cyber incidents, mitigate vulnerabilities, communicate with leadership and complete business-driven requests, such as creating a budget report for proposed network infrastructure upgrades under pressure.

Uptime refers to the percentage of time that key business services are functional and available to users. In the context of the competition, all of the team’s activities were reviewed every minute by a scoring system which simulated real customer traffic, verifying their operations and appearance to the outside world.

The CU Boulder student team from the��Department of Computer Science competed against 7 other universities including Brigham Young University, Colorado School of Mines, Kansas State University and the University of Denver.��

Keys to a first-place finish��

“In order to succeed at this competition, we had to balance cybersecurity with usability, uptime and communications,” said Alexander Juenemann, a computer science master’s student and team captain for the competition, “much like in a real-world enterprise environment.”��

Juenemann credits the team’s success to a combination of preparation, coordination and adaptability.

“One of our biggest strengths was strong team synergy,” he said. “Each member had a clearly defined role allowing us to act quickly without overlap or confusion.”

That effort paid off in measurable results with the�� maintaining an average 90% service uptime throughout the competition, well above the competition average of 69%. Keeping servers, applications and services online proved just as critical as blocking attacks.

Preparation from previous years also played a key role. After returning to CCDC competition in 2024 following a pause, the team built expertise in enterprise systems, common network services and defensive security techniques. During the regional event, the organizers introduced new custom malware, forcing teams to analyze and respond to unfamiliar threats in real time.

“As part of our preparation, we also compete in offensive security competitions which taught us how to proactively use cyber security strategies to combat real-world attacks,” said Juenemann. “These experiences helped us understand what attackers look for and how to triage threats quickly.”��

Juenemann said their team culture mattered. He notes competition observers rated the CU Boulder team as having the ‘best team vibes,’ which helped them stay composed during the competition’s most stressful times.��

With the regional victory, CU Boulder will advance to the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition from April 24-26, where the team will face the top ten programs in the country virtually.��

“This year’s win is the result of immense dedication and growth over just three seasons,” said Juenemann. “Going from a brand new team to regional champions has been incredibly rewarding and now we’re going to nationals.”