The Southeast Missouri State University cybersecurity team has advanced to the 2015 Midwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on March 27 and 28 in Chicago.

The team took first place on Feb. 7 against 20 cybersecurity teams from six states, including Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin, securing a spot at the regional competition at Moraine Valley Community College in Chicago. If Southeast's cybersecurity team places first against 12 other teams in the competition, it will advance on to the national competition in April in San Antonio, Texas.

Charles Harner, a senior at Southeast, member of the cybersecurity team and president of the Cyber Defense Club, said he is confident in Southeast's cybersecurity team.

"We have the team to take home first place and go to nationals," Harner said. "Last year we made second at regionals, last year we brought home a trophy. So this year I see no reason why our team is not good enough to go to nationals. We've trained, we did quite well at state; I think we can do it."

Harner said if the cybersecurity team places first at regionals, after celebrating, the members would begin planning how they would get to San Antonio, Texas, for nationals.

"We'll just go in with the same attitude we've had, just go in and do our best," Harner said.

Not only will winning this competition be good for the university and for the students to put on resumes, it will allow them to gain quality, under-stress experiences that will be worthwhile to have in future job positions.

"It gives you the experience because it's not like a casual competition where you go in there and you're just like 'Yeah, whatever, I don't care.' You go in and it's a professional environment. You're held to a strict standard," Harner said. "We had a proctor there having to watch us, and that is a professional environment. We have to, especially at regionals, we come in dressed up as if we were professional, and we adhere to that. We get some of the experience of doing these things, of having the panic of 'Oh, man our website's down because of a hacker.' This is stuff that we're going to get to do later on in life after we graduate or even during internships. And having that experience, it puts you ahead of the people who don't have it."

Harner said teams at the state competition were given eight hours to work on their websites, but that the regional competition will involve twice that time, giving the teams the task of working 16 hours over two days to maintain their websites.

"Regionals is considered to be a little bit harder than state, but it's normally, everything seems hard when your stuff's getting hacked and you're panicking," Harner said. "... Out of all the groups there, we've been called one of the most relaxed groups. We're very casual, we're very -- we take it easy -- because there's no reason to stress out over this stuff because we can fix it. A lot of the other teams will get to the point where they're yelling at each other, they'll freak out over certain things, and we're just trying to keep a good environment because in the end we're all friends."

All members of the cybersecurity team are friends and members of the Cyber Defense Club, and Harner said this contributes to the cohesive and productive attitude the team has during competitions.

"I call each and every one of the 11 people that I work with a good friend of mine," Harner said. "So we have to keep a good attitude in mind so that it doesn't come across in our work that, 'Hey, we're stressed out at each other,' so our work is done better, more efficient. We're not having any fighting during the competition."

Harner said the main focus for the team right now is concentrating on getting past regionals. He said the members have researched past national competitions but have not gone too in depth because they are trying to remain focused on regionals for the time being. He is looking forward to the competition in Chicago.

"I'm extremely thankful to be working with a good group of people," Harner said. "In and out of competition we try to be there for each other and all that. I mean, the car ride to Chicago is going to be fun, I'm even looking forward to that because the people I'm with I can call my friends. They're good people and we all help each other."