The National Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC) provides students with realistic challenges that prepare for a career in the security assessment field. The architecture of the competition is designed to mimic a real-world organization, while requiring participants to excel in both technical and communication skills. The ultimate goal is to use a unique environment to prepare young professionals to navigate the technical and administrative challenges they are likely to face in their careers. Join National CPTC directors Dan Borges and Tom Kopchak in a deep-dive discussion on what goes into building the competition scenario created for each year's event.

Tom Kopchak (Twitter: @tomkopchak) is the Director of Technical Operations at Hurricane Labs, where he pretends to manage a team of Splunk engineers, but is still an engineer and technology geek at heart. Tom's speaking experience includes a previous talk at DC24 (Sentient Storage - Do SSDs Have a Mind of Their Own?) as well as many talks at other conferences around the country (and BSides LV in 2013). He holds a Master's degree in Computing Security from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and volunteers as the white team captain for the National Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC). When he is not working with computers, Tom enjoys composing, music improvisation (Acts of Music), and playing both the piano and organ.

Dan Borges is an information security professional with over 15 years in computer science. Dan participates in a number of cyber security competitions each year, from being on the National CCDC Red Team and helping with the black team for the Collegiate Penetration Testing Competition (CPTC). He is an experienced red teamer who enjoys developing new tools in his free time. He has taught workshops on advanced red teaming at both DEF CON and WOPR Summit. He has been publishing a blog on infosec education for more than 10 years at