The National Cyber League (NCL) is one of the nation’s largest and most competitive cybersecurity training platforms.
This fall, an undergraduate team from Fairfield University’s School of Engineering and Computing competed in the national NCL competition. The Fairfield team placed in the top nine percent of competitors with a rank of 379 out of 4,214 teams, securing a Platinum Team Medal.
Fairfield University’s team featured Viktor Nikolov ’26, a computer science major with a mathematics minor. Nikolov is a student-athlete and the president of the Computer Science Society. He competed alongside School of Engineering and Computing undergraduates Kristopher Marte ’27, Jan Salafia ’27, and Agustin Gonzalez Jr. ’28, with guidance from assistant professor of cybersecurity, Akshay Mathur, PhD.
The NCL Competition immerses students in real-world cybersecurity problem-solving, from analyzing network traffic and investigating logs to exploiting vulnerable websites and cracking passwords. “Participating in the NCL has been an amazing learning experience," said Nikolov. "Working under pressure and collaborating with my teammates—analyzing real-world cybersecurity threats and applying hands-on skills that are used every day in SOC operations, incident response, and digital forensics—was transformative.”
