Fox Cities prepares for CyberPatriot Competition Round

Searching through file directories, looking for the “malicious files” that need to removed in order to secure our computer. Meticulously scanning folder by folder, yet nothing has turned up. The search continues through each program that is running, and there it is: a computer virus running on the system. Immediately we delete the virus and points are scored. This is how the Cyber Patriot competitions and practice rounds work as we go through the tasks of securing and protecting a virtual computer.

“CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program. At the center of CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. The competition puts teams of high school and middle school students in the position of newly hired IT professionals tasked with managing the network of a small company.”

For each round the CyberPatriot team is given a virtual computer simulation that runs on a member’s personal computer. Members are then tasked with the security and protection of that system. Our team then works together to find the answers and fix the problems to gain points for our team. There are four separate images we get in a competition round, those being Windows, Windows Server, Linux and Cisco. In order to do them all, our team is divided into groups to work on each one more separately. The Fox Cities Composite Squadron CyberPatriot team consists of:

Cadet Second Lieutenant Matthew Niemi and Cadet Second Lieutenant Isaiah Bastian – Windows Team.
Cadet Technical Sergeant Joshua Jerred and Cadet Senior Master Sergeant Jacob Coulombe – Linux Team.
Cadet Chief Master Sergeant Karl Steenepoorte and Cadet Airman Alec Tuchscherer – Cisco Team.

The Fox Cities Composite Squadron CyberPatriot team is preparing for the first round of actual competition in November, and we hope to do well this year. The technical knowledge of our team is well rounded; with some brand new to CyberPatriot and system security and some who are more experienced. We are excited to see how our team places this year! Stay tuned for team updates!

For more information on CyberPatriot visit: http://ae.capmembers.com/programs/cyberpatriot/ or https://www.uscyberpatriot.org/home.

Article written by: C/CMSgt Steenepoorte

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