University of Central Florida's cyber defense team competing in national competition

ORLANDO, Fla. (FOX 35 ORLANDO) - The University of Central Florida’s Cyber Defense Competition Team is competing against 10 universities across the country in the 2019 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.

The competition is being held in Orlando at The Rosen Centre. More than 80 college students will work as teams to operate and manage a fictional company’s computer network and protect it against hackers.

“The teams are really challenged with two things; providing the services to their corporation while they’re defending the network against cyber threats and attacks,” said Don Bray, Raytheon’s director of cyber training in Orlando.

Raytheon is a sponsor of the competition.

Bray said the competition is about teamwork and real-world experience.

“You see their skill-sets sharpen as they learn the network and their adversary techniques. So we really want to make sure they can operate and perform under pressure.”

Recruiters are also in town scouting for future employees. Experts expect more than three million jobs in the cybersecurity industry will go unfilled worldwide by 2021.

The competition continues Wednesday and an awards ceremony will take place Thursday.