Hillsdale CyberPatriots move on to the semi-finals!

Hillsdale students have been given an opportunity to participate in a unique National Youth Cyber Defense Competition sponsored by the US AirFore and Northrop Grumman called CyberPatriot. This program puts 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. The students work in teams of 2-6 and have 6 hours to find and fix as many vulnerabilities as they can.

Hillsdale has two teams competing this year against 460 other middle school teams. After two rounds of competition, both teams are in the top 50% and moving on to the semifinals. The top 3 teams in the state will move on to compete in the finals in Baltimore, Maryland in April.

Hillsdale students are being sponsored by 7th grade science teacher Carol Strampfer who is working with Cuyamaca College IT teacher Curt Sharon and James US Navy Cybersecurity specialist James Pensal.

What is especially impressive is that these students only recently started meeting and have had very little time to formally train relative to most teams. We’re hoping to continue training throughout the school year and summer in order to more fully prepare for the competition next year.

The students competing this year are:

8-bit Huskies: Tyler Bryson, Aidan Hirasuna, and Ethan Roberts

Cyberteers: Ryan Daniels, Adria Duhamel, PB Griffen, and Kian Mamoodi

Congratulations Huskies and good luck in at the semifinals.

Marietta Minjares, Principal
Hillsdale Middle School