Berkeley County School District has some pretty tech-savvy students.
Students who are involved in their high schools’ cybersecurity teams are learning quality skills in the areas of digital safety, network security and ethical hacking, preparing students for careers in IT and cybersecurity. Students from Hanahan High and Cane Bay High’s cybersecurity teams competed this year in a national program that challenges the high schoolers’ knowledge of computer systems – and how to protect them from outside threats.
CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program, created by the Air & Space Forces Association to help guide students toward STEM careers. 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. School teams are put in the position of newly-hired IT professionals tasked with managing the network of a small company. Through a series of online competition rounds, teams are given a set of virtual operating systems and are tasked with finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities while maintaining critical services. The top teams in the nation earn all-expenses-paid trips to Maryland for the National Finals Competition, where they can earn national recognition and scholarship money.
The CyberPatriot18 program ran this past school year (18 indicates the program being in its 18th competition season), starting in October with 4,787 teams across the United States – and beyond. Through a series of online competition rounds, teams were tested on their ability to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities in simulated environments, including windows and Linux operating systems.
After two challenging rounds of online competition, the Open and All Service division teams were divided into three skill tiers; “Open” means the team is open to any high school-aged students while “All Service” refers to teams consisting of students participating in military programs such as JROTC. Teams scoring in the top 30 percent of teams were placed in the Platinum Tier; the middle 40 percent of teams in the Gold Tier; and the remaining 30 percent of teams in the Silver Tier. All teams then competed within their tiers for state awards and advancement to the Semifinal Round.
Hanahan High had a team consisting of JROTC students who did very well in the state round, finishing first place in the Gold tier within South Carolina All Service division, and third place overall in the All Service Division. They qualified for the National Semifinals (though it should be noted this is the final level that Gold Tier teams can attain) and among all JROTC teams nationwide, they officially finished ninth out of 73 teams. Among JROTC Army Teams nationwide, they officially finished third and were recognized as such. The team consisted of captain Mason Heath, Landon Riley and Alexander Harlan. Hanahan High engineering teacher Dr. Matthew Vargyas serves as the team’s coach.
Cane Bay High’s CyberSecurity team, the Cobra Ciphers, received a second place Gold Tier award in the Open division for CyberPatriot18. The team then got invited to Trident Technical College’s Palmetto Cyber Defense Competition – or PCDC – in April. They were one of 10 high school teams that competed. The team consisted of captain Alonzo Jenkins, Abigail Liron, Kevin Soll, Chase Owens, Skye Chavez, Hasan Sexton and Cameron Holmes. Cane Bay High Business Education teacher Dr. Lavenia Anderson serves as the team’s coach.
Congratulations to all the cybersecurity students for their hard work this past year!