Cyberpatriot, a cybersecurity learning and competing opportunity

Have you ever heard of CyberPatriot, "... the National Youth Cyber Education Program" ? (https://www.uscyberpatriot.org/Pages/About/What-is-CyberPatriot.aspx)

My daughter learned about this program through a mentor at a computer camp she attended this summer -- he was willing to help us get a team started of our homeschooled kids and their friends who were interested (well, it turned out that it was just my kids and one friend!) Anyhow, he volunteered to help us as our team mentor.

Thus began our CyberPatriot adventure! I signed up as the coach (which is kind of laughable, considering my low computer savvy) and signed our team up (my 3 plus 1). Our mentor and the state representative of the Air Force Association held a few training sessions in which the students learned about cybersecurity and how to fix vulnerabilities on different operating systems (such as windows 7, windows 8, windows 2008, different versions of ubuntu, and more!)

This is a competition-driven learning adventure, I suppose because competition spurs many people on to learn more -- with different tiers of competition, ending with a national competition of the best of the teams. This is year 9 (CyberPatriot IX) and the number of teams competing is around 4404 teams. Teams are made up of a coach and up to 5 members. There are high school teams, middle school teams, and "all service" teams (JROTC, Civil Air Patrol, and such).

This program is through The Air Force Association. It's a great opportunity for your interested student to learn more about cybersecurity! To find out more about it, check out this link: https://www.uscyberpatriot.org/home

(ps, a lot of schools have teams, you may be able to join one of them...or you can form your own. We are a homeschooled team, I know there are other organizational teams, such as through Girl Scouts and such).

Here are some pictures of our team competing in the November and December rounds.