Students from Hanahan High's JROTC program had an eventful cybersecurity season.
Mason Heath, Landon Riley and Alexander Harlan made up a cybersecurity team that participated in the CyberPatriot18 program this past school year. Hanahan High engineering teacher Dr. Matthew Vargyas serves as the team’s coach.
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.
Hanahan's three JROTC students 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.
Hanahan was one of two schools that participated in CyberPatriot18; READ MORE.
Way to go, students!