Young Leaders Showing "The Right Stuff"

TLCA just finished their second season of competing in the national CyberPatriot competitions. There were four teams this year, our first high school team, our first Civil Air Patrol team (junior high division) and two other junior high teams. 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. 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 in a six-hour period. Teams compete for the top placement within their state and region, and the top teams in the nation earn all-expenses-paid trips to Baltimore, MD for the National Finals Competition where they can earn national recognition and scholarship money. TLCA teams competed against hundreds of teams from across the nation in each division and had two teams that made it to the semi-final round this season but, unfortunately, did not advance to the finals. The teams are so successful because of our partnership with Goodfellow Air Force Base. The teams are allowed to have mentors and, since Goodfellow is a cyber-security training facility for the Air Force, there are many highly qualified and eager mentors who are willing to share their expertise with our students who are exploring careers in the cyber security field.