The hack of confidential data belonging to Sony Pictures Entertainment in November is just one recent example of the increasing need for cyber defense in the United States.
Students from two Little Silver schools – Red Bank Regional High School and Markham Place School – are doing their part and recently received national recognition for their cyber defense abilities.
The students, competing in three separate teams, competed in CyberPatriot’s National Youth Cyber Defense Competition at National Harbor, Maryland in March after earning a spot in the national competition by advancing through state and regional events.
Two teams from Markham Place School finished second and third out of a national field of middle school teams, while the team from Red Bank Regional finished fourth out of the approximately1,000 high school teams that initially entered the competition.
“CyberPatriot is a competition through the Air Force Association to get students interested in cyber security,” said Red Bank Regional technology teacher Mandy Galante, one of the teams’ coaches. “It is in response to the problem in this country that there are just not enough people qualified to do cyber security and if you don’t find out that you’re interest in doing it until you’re a junior in college, which is common, it’s just too late.”
As part of the school’s Academy of Information Technology’s CyberPatriot subset, Galante and fellow teacher Jeremy Milonas challenge the students on cyber security concepts and problems.
“We constantly introduce new security concepts to the students, but we also practice the basics. Just like with any sport, you need muscle memory,” Galante said. “There can be other teams that are as good as us, but we need to be faster than them.”
The teams practice and compete weekly from August through April, which Galante compared to a three-season sport.
“It’s less like a hobby type of sport and more like a ‘this is where my life is going’ sport. Just like if you have a student in football who really sees themselves as a career football player,” she said. “Our technology students… see themselves wanting to do this for a living. Though they have picked out components. A few want to write security software, a few want to defend networks and some want to go into Pen testing.”
Red Bank Regional senior Mark Eulner said he was looking for a way to stay competitive after deciding not to continue playing football after his sophomore year. What he chose, partially due to his interest in video games, was the Academy of Information Technology and CyberPatriot.
Eulner, who is also president of the school’s Student Council, is now deciding between attending college at either Virginia Tech or Michigan, where he plans to study computer science or cyber security.
“Before CyberPatriot I didn’t even think of computer security as a career field,” said Eulner, 18, of Shrewsbury. “Now it’s one of my top options.”
Red Bank Regional has one of the only high schools in Monmouth County that teaches cyber security as a topic, Galante said.
“Our students learn it as curriculum and then participate in it as a sport,” she said. “At the high school level, they are computer scientists already, they are security professionals and some of them are already certified.”
These skills are already making them a valuable asset to their friends and classmates.
“Just today in my networking class, one of my fellow classmates had a problem and called me over to help. It was actually a problem I knew, only because I do CyberPatriot,” said sophomore Kyle Neary, 16, of Shrewsbury.
Neary said when he entered high school he did not know much about computers. But now, because of CyberPatriot, he is already considering make it a career.
“You see it on the news every day, another huge company getting hacked,” he said. “Who knows? We could learn to stop it.”
Rob Spahr may be reached at rspahr@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@TheRobSpahr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.