Hickory students participate in CyberPatriot competition

David L. Dye, The Herald, Sharon, Pa.
·2 min read

Nov. 16—HERMITAGE — Some Hickory High School students are tackling simulated cybersecurity threats in a nationwide competition.

The CyberPatriot's National Youth Cyber Defense Competition is the world's largest cybersecurity competition, and is open to all schools and approved youth organizations, said Joe Kulbacki, director of instructional technology at the Hermitage School District.

The district's contribution to the competition includes the students of Megan Geisel's cyber security class, who are split into five teams of about four to five students each.

The initial rounds of the competition — Round One and Round Two — help determine which groups the different teams should be categorized in for the following rounds.

During the competition's first round held in late October, Hickory's highest-scoring team placed 1,946 out of 2,987 teams.

The second round was held on Nov. 2, and featured 3,499 teams. The results from that second round have not yet been released, Kulbacki said.

The teams' scores from both rounds will be combined when categorizing the different teams.

The next round will be states in early December, followed by semi-finals and eventually the national round held from March 15 through March 19 in Bethesda, Md.

Students participating in the competition must find viruses and vulnerabilities on the Debian, Ubuntu, Windows 11 and Windows Server 22 operating systems.

"You're given an image of an operating system and you have a set number of vulnerabilities you have to fix within four hours, and if you go over those four hours you start to lose points," Kulbacki said.

Geisel's cyber security class is open to students in grades nine through 12. Although her class participated in the competition last school year as well, Kulbacki said both classes were made up of first-year cyber security students.

Assisting Hickory's CyberSecurity students is Matthew DeMaria, of Penn State Shenango's cybersecurity program.

"Matthew has been instrumental in mentoring the students through the complex materials needed to effectively perform real-world tasks and strategies used by professionals within the industry," Kulbacki said.

Hickory's students have also visited the Pennsylvania Cybersecurity Center in LindenPointe, where Kulbacki said officials were impressed with the students' abilities.

"They were very impressed with how well our kids did, considering they were all first-year students and this was the first time some of these kids have been exposed to this," he said.

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