A team of computer science students from Washington State University earned a top ranking in the Cyber Power Rankings, competing against more than 8,500 students from nearly 500 colleges across the country in the National Cyber League (NCL) Fall 2025 Competition.
The WSU team, called CyberCougs Crimson, placed 12th in the competition, significantly improving on their performance from the previous season. The team, along with five other WSU teams that participated in the competition, are drawn from the Cyber Security Group, a student club that has about 50 members studying in the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture.
“The students have been awesome in this prestigious national competition, topping what they did last season, which was already impressive,” said Assefaw Gebremedhin, the student club’s advisor and the Berry Family Distinguished Associate Professor in WSU’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “For our students, this program offers the chance to build critically important workforce skills in cybersecurity that are in higher demand than ever.”
The students have been awesome in this prestigious national competition, topping what they did last season, which was already impressive.
Assefaw Gebremedhin
Berry Family Distinguished Associate Professor
Washington State University
The prestigious cybersecurity skills competition, supported by Cyber Skyline and in partnership with the National Cyber League, is for college students in the U.S. The event includes real-world cybersecurity tasks that are encountered in industry, such as identifying hackers from data; auditing vulnerable websites; and recovering from ransomware attacks. Students who participate learn important workforce skills in cybersecurity, according to the program’s website. As part of the competition, the students receive a skills report on their real-world projects that can be shared with potential employers.
The six teams of students spent weeks preparing for the competition, including solving practice problems and organizing workshops to build skills. Out of 4,200 teams, the WSU students placed 23rd, 163rd, 205th, 355th, and 371st, earning the 12th spot in the league’s power ranking. The WSU student group is also currently in third place after the first round of cyber challenges in the 2026 National VICEROY Cyber Competition. Another WSU team from the same group won first place in the 2024 National VICEROY Competition.
Many of the student team members participate in WSU’s VICEROY Cybersecurity Education and Research (CySER) Institute. The CySER program is one of the first three VICEROY Institutes established in the U.S. with the goal of accelerating the development of foundational expertise in critical cyber operational skills for future military and civilian leaders of the Armed Forces. The CySER program trains ROTC and DOD-skilled civilian workers in computer science and other majors in cyber basics, operations, or defense, offering bachelor’s degrees as well as specialized certificates. In recent years, WSU also instituted a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity, and last year, the university was named a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research (CAE-R) by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
