3 minute read
Student is a Top Cyber Sleuth
UCM Cybersecurity Major Excels in National and Global Competitions
Jake Saunders, ’24, was an exemplary student in the University of Central Missouri’s Cybersecurity program. In the fall 2023 season, his CTF team, “Former Gifted Kids,” took first place out of more than 5,000 teams from around the United States in the National Cyber League (NCL).
CTF stands for Capture the Flag, a challenge where competitors find hidden pieces of data called “flags” by hacking into vulnerable websites in a secured system, analyzing log files and network traffic, decrypting messages, reverse engineering computer programs and performing other cyber feats.
In March, “Former Gifted Kids” again took first place in a CTF competition hosted by the Cybersecurity Club at Virginia Tech (CyberVT). As part of the U.S. Cyber Team, Saunders is currently training to compete on a global level in the International Cybersecurity Competition this fall against Team Europe, Team Asia, Team Canada and others in Santiago, Chile.
Approximately 2,000 people from across the country tried out for the U.S. Cyber Team last year, and Saunders was one of only 30 selected. His specialty on the team is web exploitation and attack/defense.
Saunders’ cybersecurity journey began during his junior year at Lee’s Summit High School, when he enrolled in a Summit Technology Academy (STA) computer networking class, taught by UCM alumna Julie Akers, ’84, ’10.
The class was offered at the Missouri Innovation Campus, a cutting-edge facility that STA shares with UCM, which is a designated U.S. Air Force Association CyberPatriot Center of Excellence. Participating in the CyberPatriot program, led at the time by now-retired UCM alumna Lisa Oyler, ’01 and ’02, piqued Saunders’ interest in a field he’s gravitated toward since childhood.
“I’ve always had a knack for tinkering and playing with computers,” says Saunders. “I was always the guy whose parents or cousins or friends would go to if they had issues with their computer.”
After graduating from high school, Saunders enrolled in the Cybersecurity program at UCM, which is designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense by the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency. This spring, UCM earned top rankings in the national Cybersecurity Guide, being awarded the No. 5 position for Best Online Master’s in Cybersecurity and the No. 8 spot for Best Master’s in Cybersecurity.
Saunders led UCM’s extracurricular team, the “Cyber Mules,” to a Top 10 ranking out of nearly 4,000 teams in the NCL competition in fall 2022.
A year later, he traveled with half a dozen other members of the Cyber Mules to Stanford University in California to compete in a regional Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition. On a virtualized network, students hacked as many computers as possible and wrote a report about the vulnerabilities they found and how they could be remediated.
“Solving those problems really makes you use your brain and be creative,” Saunders says.
UCM classes like Computer and Network Forensics and an internship with Eagle Technologies, based in Salina, Kansas, helped him prepare for these competitions. He also obtained numerous certifications, including as a Dale Carnegie Scholar through the Delta Chi chapter at UCM and as an Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP).
After graduating in May with a degree in Cybersecurity and a minor in Computer Science, Saunders is completing Offensive Security’s Learn Unlimited certification program. He has already founded his own company, Downscope Security Solutions, and is poised for a promising career at the forefront of the cybersecurity workforce of the future.
Learn more about UCM's Cybersecurity program at https://www.ucmo.edu/cybersecurity
