Last weekend's California Cyber Innovation Challenge, a competition hosted by GoBiz and Cal Poly to help create a workforce pipeline from high schools to career paths, shows that the movement has caught fire.
CalPoly hosted the event for the 16 high school teams — double the number applicants who attended in 2016, which was the first competition.
“What was exciting to us was that it wasn’t just teams from Silicon Valley, San Francisco, L.A., and/or San Diego, which you would think that these might be hubs where there are industry clusters, but also in the central coast, Central Valley as well. And the fact that we had two all-girl teams was really exciting,” Sid Voorakkara, the deputy director of external affairs for GoBiz, told Techwire.
Jesuit and Monterey Trail High School were the two schools chosen to represent the Sacramento area. Jesuit’s team was partially drawn from its CyberPatriot Club. Jesuit has also scored well in the Air Force Association’s Cyber Defense Competition and was invited to participate in the Sacramento Mayor’s Cup challenge.
“We recruited and we learned together in a short period of time to build the competitive team that participated in 2017 California Cyber Innovation Challenge,” Justin Tsai, spokesperson for Jesuit’s team, wrote in an email to Techwire.
The teams have been training for similar events.
“All the members go through the training modules provided by the AFA CyberPatriot Program, with the emphasis on cyberethics and online safety. They then immerse themselves further into the vulnerabilities and countermeasures in Windows and Linux operating systems, and the concepts and operations of Cisco networking,” Tsai wrote.
The ”young cybersecurity experts” also need to have a good grasp on digital forensics, according to Tsai. Digital forensics is a field in which the young experts are expected to be well-versed.
The competition included two events: CyberPatriot images, in which teams needed to patch and update Windows and Linux operating systems, reducing the risk of cyberattacks; and a Digital Forensics Challenge.
In the digital forensics module, the team searched through a faux crime scene and gathered clues. The evidence included a laptop that the students could gather evidence from and analyze the crime.
While students coded, coaches were able to meet with state and college representatives. They also discussed workforce development with industry support groups.
“We are guiding these students to develop area specialties as well as collaborative and networking skills in order build the best cybersecurity workforce,” Tsai wrote.
The prize was a total of $5,000 in scholarships, provided by the Los Angeles Unified School District through a grant from the National Security Agency’s Cyber Competition Scholarship. In all, $3,000 went to North Hollywood’s Togo for best overall team score, while $1,000 went to North Hollywood Togo for best cyberpatriot results. Another $1,000 to North Hollywood Truman for the best forensics score.
“Some of these students may not end up being cybersecurity professionals, but they should know, regardless of what career path they do choose, the importance and relevance of cybersecurity,” Voorakkara said.
