NightHax Team ranked Top 3% in National Cyber League Competition

May 16, 2022

NLC PR

Cyber Defense Students representing Northeast Lakeview College as the “NightHax” competed again this spring in a national cyber security competition. Students competed individually and then as a team. The NightHax team ranked 123rd place out of 3,658 teams in the National Cyber League beating numerous university and graduate school teams and placing them in the Top 3% of the US.

The National Cyber League competition is a “capture the flag” or “hack-a-thon” style event for U.S. collegiate (2yr, 4yr, and graduate) level schools. The competition includes challenges from Open-Source Intelligence, Cryptography, Password Cracking, Forensics, and 5 other categories. Students are given cyber security challenges ranging from easy to hard and have 56 hours over a single weekend to solve as many challenges as possible.

The NightHax team consisted of NLC Cyber Defense students:

  1. Sean Sexton    (Team Captain)
  2. Andrew Danner                     
  3. Candace Garza                       
  4. Sarah Gonzales          
  5. Jacob Mulvaney
  6. Shelby Fierro
  7. Mark Brown

NLC Cyber Defense prepared these associate degree level students to compete against and beat 4yr university teams from across the country. “This demonstrates the dedication of NLC students, the critical thinking skills, and ability to work as a team to overcome any challenge,” says Chip Thornsburg, Program Coordinator for Cyber Defense at Northeast Lakeview College.

“ This NightHax team has set the bar high enough to challenge future NLC students for years to come.”

About NLC’s Cyber Defense Program

The Cyber Defense program at Northeast Lakeview College began in 2019 and since then has been touted with several recognitions.  Most recently being named one of the 20 best associate degree programs in the nation in 2021 for Cybersecurity.  NLC's Cyber Defense program equips students with industry-relevant Cyber Security Training in Cisco, Windows, and Linux inside of a dedicated network environment.

Learn more and to apply, visit the Cyber Defense webpage