Our friends over at the DNSSEC Deployment Initiative published the great news that DNSSEC was involved in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC) held in April 2012. This annual event, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology division, involved this year 126 schools and over 1,500 competitors. The important part to us was this quote:
According to organizer Dwayne Williams, roughly 80% of the competitors had heard of DNSSEC before, but less than 10% had ever actually used or implemented it prior to NCCDC. While two of the teams noted that they would like to see simpler, step-by-step instructions for implementing DNSSEC, all of the teams ultimately thought DNSSEC was a technology they planned to look at more in the future.
That’s 1,500 more people who can be out there able to deploy DNSSEC! And since these competitors are students who will be going on into industry this is excellent news for the future of DNSSEC.
We also understandably liked this part of the quote:
While two of the teams noted that they would like to see simpler, step-by-step instructions for implementing DNSSEC…
That is precisely the type of content we’re aiming to build here for DNSSEC, and our new DNSSEC content roadmap identifies further tutorials we’d like to add. By the time the 2013 NCCDC event rolls around, these students will be able to find many more simpler tutorials out there!
Kudos to all the 2012 NCCDC teams for working with DNSSEC – and we look forward to learning what DNSSEC challenges will be part of the next NCCDC event.