LT Cyberpatriot squads piled into the SC DC at 8 a.m. on Feb. 3 and began to set up their equipment for the competition. The team members have been training for these competitions for months. Both squads spent the following six hours trying to secure a server and rack up as many points by downloading a virtual image representation and fixing flaws in the cybersecurity. They are connected to the national server during the competition which keeps track of their points and then compares them to other teams.

“I am really proud of the team,” Director of Technology Ed Tennant said. “This group of students has really come together to embrace this challenge and share with one another their prior experiences and things they are learning about.”

Cyberpatriot is a new club that launched this year at LT, and is part of National Youth Cyber Education Program, run by the Air Force Association.  LT had two teams of five people that competed in this year’s competition. The squads both qualified for the state competition: one in the platinum tier and the other in the gold tier: highest tier and second-highest tier respectively. The tiers determine complexity of the cyber security challenges. Although neither squad qualified for the semi-finals, the gold tier group was only a few points short, Tennant said.

“I had no idea what to expect but they did quite well,” Systems Administrator Michael Vasich said. “If the kids just kept showing up and were interested, I was happy. From there, any actual competition success was above and beyond anything I could have ever expected.”

The LT Cyberpatriot branch encompasses a unique aspect that is not required by the national organization. The meetings not only revolve around training for competitions, but also focus on general information about cyber security. Guest speakers are invited to talk about the branch of cyber security in which they are involved, Tennant said.

“My favorite part is definitely learning about new material while preparing for competition,” club founder Andy Schramka ‘18 said. “There are so many different aspects of cyber knowledge that the competition covers: from security, to encryption and networking. It’s always really cool to learn something new, but still see how it’s related to other topics we’ve covered before.”

Cyberpatriot meets every Thursday afternoon in the SC DC at 3:15 p.m. The meetings normally range from an hour to an hour and 15 minutes.

“Computer security is not going away,” Vasich said. “We see it every day with companies getting hacked, and personal information getting stolen. It is here to stay, so if it is a field you are interested in, even a little bit, it is worth exploring to see if you can turn it into a career”