Acronis cosponsors the first Southwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Comptition

April 11, 2005, South San Francisco, CA, and San Antonio, TX — Acronis, Inc., the technological leader in storage management software, announced that it will co-sponsor the first Southwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition April 15–17 at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).

Acronis is donating 15 licenses for its Acronis True Image Server 8.0 for Windows and 15 licenses of Acronis True Image Server 8.0 for Linux, and 5 licenses of Acronis True Image Corporate Workstation 8.0 for Windows for the teams. The value of the donation is nearly $25,000. Other corporate sponsors include Cisco Systems, Northrup Grumman, Harcourt and the Alamo Chapter of the Information Systems Security Association.

The competition features 40 participants representing The University of Texas at San Antonio, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, University of North Texas and Del Mar College. The eight-member teams will focus on the operational aspect of managing and protecting an existing network infrastructure.

Each team will inherit a fictional operational business network with email, web sites, data files and computer users. Scoring will be based on each team's ability to correct network problems, perform business tasks and defend their networks from hostile cyber attacks.

"Acronis is proud to be co-sponsoring such an important event," said Max Tsypliaev, CEO of Acronis. "Tomorrow's IT leaders need to be well versed in the challenges of running an enterprise network, and a competitions such as this helps identify not only networking's best practices, but also allows the students explore new best practices."

"These are among the best and the brightest up-and-coming network administrators in Texas," added Stephen Lawton, Acronis' director of marketing. "While Acronis is expert at disaster recovery, these are the administrators who must be expert at disaster prevention."

"San Antonio has a rich history of cyber security operations and research, and with the presence of the Air Force's Computer Emergency Response Team and Information Warfare Center, UTSA is a logical location to host a cyber competition," said Greg White, UTSA Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) interim director. "This particular competition features security, but emphasizes maintaining the operational use of a network."

UTSA is the first Texas university and one of 59 in the nation with the "Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education" designation by the National Security Agency (NSA). The designation means UTSA's curriculum and faculty meet or exceed NSA standards to teach information-assurance security and makes the university eligible to apply for grants from NSA and the National Science Foundation. CIAS is part of UTSA's newly created Institute for the Protection of American Communities, an institute established to provide technical expertise and solutions to security challenges faced by communities. For more information, contact Kris Rodriguez, public relations specialist, at [email protected].