Youth Compete in Cyber Security Competition
The youth is our future. These high school students learned valuable information. Read on to discover what challenges they faced and how they rose to the challenge.
Folsom High School’s computer science academic team recently competed for the second year in the CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Defense Competition and placed platinum and gold.
Coach and advisor Jean Cavanaugh said the competition consists of schools all over the country. Each school is allowed up to five teams with a total of five members each. Cavanaugh said it’s impressive to have five teams because some schools only have one.
Of Folsom’s five teams, two were all female, one was all male and two were co-ed. The competition the teams recently competed in was rounds one and two, which lasted not a minute more than six hours.
“CyberPatriots send us a link to two operating system images – a Windows image and a Linux image,” she said. “They have certain ‘bugs’ in them. Then they send a document that introduced the students to their ‘company.’ It explains a little about the company, who should have administrative rights and who the employees are. The students’ task for the competition is to figure out where all the bugs are, fix them, change passwords when necessary, and secure the image from any ‘open doors.’”
In the second round, the students are given a written test of Cisco Networking questions and challenges, Cavanaugh said.
Based off of a percentage of total points for each team, Cavanaugh’s group placed with three platinum level and two gold level scores.
“We don’t ‘get anything.’ It just allows us to move onto the next level,” she said. “We will compete on Jan. 20. If they don’t make a certain point percentage, we are finished for the year.” Read more »