The University of Virginia’s undergraduate cyber defense team earned an impressive second-place finish at the 2025 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, marking its best national performance in five years.
NCCDC, considered the premier college-level cybersecurity competition in the United States, challenges teams to protect complex networked systems from external threats while maintaining critical business operations. Each year, the nation’s top teams — winners of regional competitions plus one wild card — advance to the national championship, where they face a rigorous challenge that requires technical skill, teamwork and real-world problem solving.
Our education at UVA gave us the solid cybersecurity foundation we needed.
- Shreyas Mayya, team captain
Competing virtually from Grounds on April 25–27, UVA’s team faced off against nine other teams in the high-pressure, multi-day contest, with the University of California, Irvine ultimately taking the top spot.
This year’s scenario required defending the IT infrastructure of a hypothetical biotech company — a challenge that included defending conventional business systems as well as domain-specific technologies that would be unfamiliar to students.
“We had two eight-hour days to defend our network against constant attack, while keeping the business running,” team captain Shreyas Mayya said. “Our education at UVA gave us the solid cybersecurity foundation we needed to justify every decision and adapt to the unexpected.”
This year’s competition also introduced the use of artificial intelligence tools, with teams graded on how effectively they integrated them into their defensive strategies. UVA performed well with those, too, earning third place in a separate AI-focused challenge.
“AI is really good at synthesizing technical information from multiple sources,” team member Nicholas Winschel noted. “It saved us from having to dig through documentation and allowed us to respond to incidents much faster.”
UVA has a history of success in the competition, having previously won three successive national championships. They also won the regionals for the past three years.
“I am extremely proud of their hard work and the countless hours our team put into preparing for these cybersecurity competitions,” said Jack W. Davidson, professor of computer science and director of UVA’s Cybersecurity Program. “Our cybersecurity team’s consistent appearance at NCCDC has solidified UVA’s reputation as a leader in collegiate cybersecurity education.”