Guidance Software to Sponsor the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition

Guidance Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:GUID) announced today that it is sponsoring and participating in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC). The three day-event, which is being held April 25-27 in San Antonio, Texas, provides a real-time educational venue where students can apply theoretical and practical skills that they’ve learned in the classroom to real-world cybersecurity scenarios. Students from 180 colleges and universities in ten regions competed at the qualifying and regional levels. The top team from each region will compete at this national competition.

Teams of graduate and undergraduate students will assume administrative and protective duties for an existing “commercial” network. Each team begins the competition with an identical set of hardware and software and is scored on its ability to detect and respond to outside threats, maintain availability of existing services such as mail servers and web servers, respond to business requests such as the addition or removal of additional services, and balance security needs against business needs.

Guidance Software is providing the student teams with its EnCase® Enterprise product to help them perform digital investigations and quickly identify anomalous activity on the endpoints that would otherwise go undetected. The company will also participate on the “Red Team” made up of security vendors and other experts to launch systematic attacks on the students’ network environments and test their skills. Students will also have access to EnCase® Startup Training at no charge.

“It’s critical that organizations have the talent they need to address cyber threats today and in the future,” said Dave Arnett, Senior Director, Curriculum Development Training for Guidance Software. “To ensure that a pool of properly trained talent is ready to be put into action, we must engage with the next-generation of security professionals, and provide them with opportunities to develop crucial skills and become knowledgeable about the very real risks confronting organizations.”

The cybersecurity profession is grappling with a low level of interest in the field of study among students. According to a jobs report last year, only 24 percent of 1,000 adults between the ages of 18-24 who were surveyed expressed interest in a cybersecurity career. The Wall Street Journal also recently noted that the White House has called for a national strategy, similar to the effort to upgrade science and mathematics in the 1950s, to meet the challenge of turning out qualified graduates to fill cybersecurity jobs. This lack of student interest could escalate security concerns, as the pool of skilled security professionals is not increasing at the same rate as job openings within organizations.

”As a company with award-winning training programs for corporations and universities, we are committed to helping our nation build a solid infrastructure to take a more proactive stance and protect against both outsider and insider threats. This partnership will increase the profession’s visibility and raise awareness about the exciting challenges and critical importance of cyber security,” Arnett said.

The ten teams competing represent the United States Air Force Academy, Dakota State University, Northern Kentucky University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Southern Methodist University, Towson University, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Central Florida, and Western Washington University.

“The opportunity to experience the types of attacks corporations are facing on a daily basis is invaluable to future security professionals,” said Dwayne Williams, director of NCCDC. “We are committed to mentoring a new generation of security professionals while instilling a spirit of teamwork and collaboration in the security industry and its future members.”

Every student participating in the competition has been offered free admission to attend the CEIC® 2014 conference, May 19 – 22, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The event brings together security, e-discovery and forensic investigations professionals for hands-on lab sessions and presentations delivered by industry experts representing leading government agencies and corporations from around the world. Topics include endpoint threat detection, incident response, and digital forensics, as well as technology challenges and solutions for legal issues.

CCDC Mission

The mission of the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) system is to provide institutions with an information assurance or computer security curriculum in a controlled, competitive environment to assess their students’ depth of understanding and operational competency in managing the challenges inherent in protecting a corporate network infrastructure and business information systems.

About Guidance Software, Inc.

Guidance Software is recognized worldwide as the industry leader in endpoint investigation solutions for security incident response and forensic analysis. Its EnCase® Enterprise platform, deployed on over 20 million endpoints, is used by more than 65 percent of the Fortune 100 and more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500, and numerous government agencies, to conduct digital investigations of servers, laptops, desktops and mobile devices. Built on the EnCase Enterprise platform are market-leading cyber security and electronic discovery solutions, EnCase® Cybersecurity, EnCase® Analytics, and EnCase® eDiscovery. They empower organizations to conduct speedy and thorough security incident response, reveal previously hidden advanced persistent threats or malicious insider activity, perform sensitive data discovery for compliance purposes, and respond to litigation discovery requests. For more information about Guidance Software, visit www.encase.com.

EnCase®, EnScript®, FastBloc®, EnCE®, EnCEP®, Guidance Software™ and Tableau™ are registered trademarks or trademarks owned by Guidance Software in the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be used without prior written permission. All other trademarks and copyrights referenced in this press release are the property of their respective owners.