In the age that we’re all currently living in, not many competitions of any kind are happening. However, did you know that our CyberPatriot team just finished a very high-stakes competition for CHS?
In the age that we’re all currently living in, not many competitions of any kind are happening. However, did you know that our CyberPatriot team just finished a very high-stakes competition for CHS? CyberPatriot is a national youth education program created by the Air Force Association to inspire K-12 students to pursue a career in Cybersecurity and other STEM careers critical to our national security. For more information about CyberPatriots go to www.uscyberpatriot.org.
I sat down with Mr. Kettelle, the teacher for the computer IT and Cybersecurity CTE program, to get a little bit more information about this competition. Mr. Ketelle stated, “We started practicing for the competition in September of this year.” He also stated that there were three rounds of competition for every student on the team with each round lasting about six hours at a time. There were five students on our CHS cybersecurity team Jake Wisdom (‘22), Conner Bednarski (‘21), Jacob Maggio (‘21), Hayden St. Germain (‘21), and Owen Till (‘22). The point of the competition was to secure three virtual images using different operating systems like Windows or Linux and one student had to work with Cisco networking. The goal was to earn points by finding and securing vulnerabilities within an image or server, such as malware, hacking tools, and weak passwords and if the competitors further compromised the image or server they would be penalized and could possibly crash the system. Jake Wisdom and Conner Bednarski both worked on securing images in the Linux operating system. Jacob Maggio and Hayden St. Germain worked on securing images using the Windows 10 operating system. Owen Till was the only competitor that worked on securing networks using Cisco networking. There was also one Windows server image that had to be secured and everyone on the team pitched in to secure that image.
Now, since there were three six-hour rounds, the entirety of the competition had to be spread throughout multiple months. The first round of competition happened in November. Mr. Ketelle stated, “We didn’t know what to expect in the first round since this was our first time ever having a CyberPatriots team.” The team suffered a bit of hardship in the first round but they were able to pull themselves together and get through it. The second round happened just one month later in December and then the state competition happened at the end of January. Each Cyberpatriot team in the state was placed into different tiers based on their performance and proficiency in the other two competitions. The CHS team managed to get into the gold tier of the competition, which is second best to platinum, the highest tier. Within the Gold tier of competitors, the CHS CyberPatriot team won 2nd place. I sat with 2 of the 5 competitors to ask what they liked most about their time in the competition. Jacob Maggio said, “I liked how competitive and experimental the competition was.” Jake Wisdom added, “The team was what I enjoyed the most. It was nice having these guys around to learn and compete with.” As a final question for Mr.Ketelle, I asked why students should consider competing with the CyberPatriots. He answered, “The demand for Cybersecurity is growing and the amount of jobs available is higher than the number of trained applicants currently in the field. CyberPatriots gives students the opportunity to get a taste of what Cybersecurity is like and to give them experience in this growing field.”
Next year, Mr.Ketelle would like to have one or two more Cyberpatriot teams each with five students. I would definitely suggest that you get involved. Cybersecurity is a skill that’s only going to help you. Don’t worry if you aren’t “tech-savvy”. None of these competitors knew what to expect going into this, but they all learned and competed and did really well in all three rounds of competition. Once again, if you are interested in CyberPatriots, go ask Mr.Ketelle about it in room 804 or go to www.uscyberpatriot.org.
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