Competing against military and industry experts, as well as independent specialists, a four-person team from the College of Technology placed fifth in the yearlong international 2013 DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge.

In addition, they were the top team in the graduate school category. The team, known as Or11, included computer and information technology graduate students William Ellis, Jacob Kambic, Eric Katz and Sydney Liles. The competition attracted more than 1,200 teams.

Nearly every school system in the United States has its own computer system, and Marcus Rogers says they have become an easy target for cybercriminals.

"They tend to be pretty wide open and insecure, and there's a lot of ability to use those as test beds," said Rogers, associate professor of computer and information technology in Purdue's College of Technology. "Credit card fraud, identity theft, or in some cases, they might even be going out and looking at some sort of foreign espionage."