By Yesenia Garcia –
First place certificate.
PHS NJROTC has competed in the national Cyber Patriot competition for four years. The Cyber Patriot competition consists of students working together to perform cybersecurity tasks and other exercises in computer science.
Cyber Patriot teams are supported by the Air Force Association, because it encourages students towards careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, as well as cyber security.
PHS’s Cyber Patriot team is made up of seventeen NJROTC cadets. Saira Garcia is president of the team. Lizeth Salas is Vice President, and Arly Arriaga is Secretary. The rest of the team consists of cadets, Christopher Restituyo, Yesenia Garcia, Kevin Villanueva, Jesus Arriaga, Kelly Romero, Desiree Lucca, Carlos Hernandez, Justin Rymut, Kyana Rodriguez, Sergio Bautista, Jessica Guizar, Guadalupe Guerrero, Evelyn Calixto and Jose Hernandez.
To compete the cadets have six hours to work on three challenging complex images, by researching them on the internet, a Cisco network quiz, and a Cisco Network Packet Tracer. The PHS team competed with many schools around the world.
This is the first year PHS NJROTC has fielded four separate teams. This year is the biggest the Cyber Patriot program has ever been. The tedious tasks that the teams are responsible for completing, during the competition, are to create stronger passwords, turn on firewalls, code decrypt and delete files, scripts, and find hidden files. The teams use multiple operating systems such as Windows 7, Windows 8, Ubuntu, Linux and Cisco.
PHS Cyber Patriot Team working hard to address cyber security threat.
For the first time ever, there have been four teams competing to try to make it past the state level to compete in Baltimore against teams from around the country.
The team is led by Petty Officer Nuyen. He has support from student NJROTC cadets, Saira Garcia, Lizeth Salas and Arly Arriaga. Senior Saira Garcia is working hard on her third year of Cyber Patriot and has a lot of pressure being the president. Seniors Lizeth Salas and Arly Arriaga are both on their second year taking the roles of vice president and secretary.
With the help of Petty Officer Nuyen, and the new PHS AP Computer Science teacher, Mr. Blath, three teams earned platinum and one team earned gold during round two, of the Cyber Patriot competition, on December 6. On the next competition that took place on January 31, teams competed once again and were able to make it to the regional round.
The regionals, on February 20, showed that the gold team was number one in the country. The other three platinum teams placed 73, 83 and 86. In a crowded field of 350 teams PHS ranked very well against these other teams. This is the best PHS has done since the team was first created.
Saira Garcia said, “Doing this for three years has definitely impacted my future. I’ve actually decided to go to college and study computer science and to keep on learning as much as I can.”
The 2016 PHS Cyber Patriot Team. Photos by Yesenia Garcia.
Lizeth Salas said, “Cyber Patriot has opened a new career path for my future. It has also increased my knowledge and peaked my interest in computer engineering.”
Arly Arriaga said, “The team has grown phenomenally and now that we’ve achieved platinum for three teams, when last year we only reached gold.”
The team will be at a loss next year when seven of this year’s seniors will be graduating and pursuing their goals, many using the skills learned in the valuable program. The future for this Cyber Patriot team is definitely bright and big things are coming their way along with Petty Officer Nuyen who has dedicated his time into these individuals and has been an amazing part of their achievement.
