3 minute read
Geek Speak: Cyber Security at Lakeside High School-Hot Springs
EAST prides itself on preparing and producing students better equipped to handle the demands of the job market. Cyber security is a profession that requires proficiency in coding and problem-solving to protect our technical infrastructure from everything from annoying viruses to theft or loss of critical information. On a larger scale, the need for cyber security professionals nationally is increasing by the day. Individuals committed to providing cyber security require a certain amount of tenacity and the EAST students at Lakeside High School-Hot Springs have managed to demonstrate that tenacity and earn some bragging rights along the way.
According to the official CyberPatriot website, CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program created by the Air Force Association (AFA) to inspire K-12 students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines critical to our nation’s future. At the core of the program is the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, the nation’s largest cyber defense competition that puts high school and middle school students in charge of securing virtual networks. Other programs include AFA CyberCamps, an elementary school cyber education initiative, a children’s literature series, and CyberGenerations–a cyber safety initiative geared toward keeping senior citizens safe online.
A team of EAST students known as the Downloadable Rams from EAST at Lakeside High School-Hot Springs performed well among their peers when competing in the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. These students, Evan Meyers, Adrian Erias, and Easton Russell, demonstrated their skills by finishing in the top 25% globally during that 2020-2021 school year; that’s 300th place out of 6,000 teams. Lakeside was labeled as a Platinum competitor during the competition deeming their coding and problem solving skills top tier. With multiple rounds in place to narrow down the brightest minds in the competition, Lakeside finished second in the state.
The students received an “image” during each round of competition. These images contain entire operating systems. Through a program called VMWare, a virtualization and
cloud computing software that allows multiple virtual machines to run on the same physical server, competitors can open the images and have control over the operating systems. The CyberPatriot organizers create a number of vulnerabilities and install malware on the images. Malware is intrusive software that is designed to damage and destroy computers and computer systems. Malware is an abbreviation for malicious software. Examples of common malware include viruses, worms, Trojan viruses, spyware, adware, and ransomware. It is the competitors’ job to go in and make the operating system as secure as possible as quickly as possible.
Evan Meyers, captain of Lakeside’s CyberPatriot team described how the past two years competing has improved him as a person in several ways.
“As the team’s leader, I was the person who kept the team motivated and organized through the different rounds.We created a Google Doc with tons of resources and links to websites containing information about key problems we could face during competition days. Aside from my growth as the team leader, the program itself has allowed me to explore and learn many skills useful to the cyber security career field. The competition heavily focuses on the defensive side of cyber security, a useful skill desired by most businesses and companies during this electronic era. Through CyberPatriot my eyes have been opened to the possibilities, and subsequently vulnerabilities, of technology and how to increase the security of the devices I use in my everyday life.”
With two years of experience under their belt, the Downloadable Rams of EAST at Lakeside are primed and ready not only to be champions of the CyberPatriot competition, but also for the workforce. Each member on the team is already exploring cyber security jobs while they attend college.
For more information about the competition visit USCyberPatriot.org
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