For the second year in a row, the Brandeis HS Air Force JROTC CyberPatriot team ‘The Foxhounds’ qualified to compete in the CyberPatriot National Finals Competition.
They were among 28 teams from around the nation that qualified for the virtual competition which was held the weekend of March 20. They competed in the All-Service division, for teams associated with a JROTC, Civil Air Patrol, or Navy Sea Cadet program. The Brandeis team was the only Air Force team representing the state of Texas this year.
CyberPatriot 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. In the rounds of competition, teams are given a set of virtual images that represent operating systems and are tasked with finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the images and hardening the system while maintaining critical services. They have six hours to find and restore vulnerabilities within their network. As a team, they use various computer platforms, such as Windows, Linux, Cisco, and Ubuntu to maintain their network and they receive points for restoring and fixing breaches.
Teams compete for the top placement within their state and region, and the top teams in the nation qualify National Finals Competition where they can earn national recognition and scholarship money.
Region and state competitions take place virtually at each campus and are scored electronically by the CyberPatriot organization.
CyberPatriot is part of the National Youth Cyber Education Program created by the Air Force Association to inspire K-12 students to pursue careers in cybersecurity or STEM-related fields.
