The Duke Cyber Club collaborated with North Carolina Central University (NCCU) on a national security simulation at the NCCU School of Business’ annual IT/Cybersecurity Summit on October 3, 2025. Students from NCCU joined Duke Cyber student leaders and faculty to work on a mock brief to the National Security Council about a fictional cyberattack scenario, inspired by the Atlantic Council’s 9/12 competitions.
Dr. Deanne Cranford-Wesley, Director of the Cybersecurity Lab at NCCU, invited Duke Cyber to design and facilitate the competition as part of the day-long summit. She expressed her excitement for continued partnership opportunities between NCCU and Duke’s cybersecurity communities, noting that NCCU “students gained valuable hands-on experience and developed key competencies, including incident response planning, threat analysis and prioritization, communication and collaboration, and critical thinking and problem solving.”
The cyber policy simulation consisted of two teams of NCCU students working alongside Duke Cyber representatives to dissect a complex scenario centered on America’s agricultural supply chain. After an introductory lesson on the components of a comprehensive briefing and the key players in U.S. cybersecurity policymaking, participants analyzed technical evidence, domestic risks, and anticipated global consequences.
Teams then creatively and tactfully tackled complications in port logistics, compromised vendor systems, and escalating international trade disputes by developing policy recommendations for a mock National Security Council panel consisting of Duke Cyber representatives. NCCU students delivered oral presentations followed by a Q&A period with the mock NSC to defend their solutions.
The simulation was modeled after the Atlantic Council’s Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenges. Duke Cyber’s Policy Track primarily competes in these challenges, which are international cybersecurity policy competitions designed to test students’ ability to respond to a realistic cyber crisis scenario by developing strategic policy recommendations. Duke Cyber has won several first-place finishes in these collegiate competitions.
Three Duke faculty advisors, Kim Kotlar, Jim Hargrove, and John Nicholson, joined four Duke Cyber student leaders, Angie Feng, David Jiang, Lucas Wagner, and Peter Banyas, in teaching, explaining, and judging the simulation.
Duke Cyber Club’s participation in the NCCU IT/Cybersecurity Summit aligns with the club’s mission to advance cybersecurity knowledge and build awareness within communities by hosting workshops and promoting opportunities, such as the Atlantic Council’s Cyber 9/12 challenges. As Deanne Cranford-Wesley summarized, “The exercise also reinforced the importance of teamwork, leadership, and professional conduct—skills that are essential for success in the cybersecurity field.” The club hopes to continue collaborating on future initiatives that address cybersecurity education.