Students who signed up for the CyberPatriot competition are reaching the end of the first round, some students may not know what CyberPatriot is, but may be the perfect candidates for it.

CyberPatriot is a national competition for any student who wants to sign up, however, a basic understanding of cybersecurity is needed to understand and participate in it.

CyberPatriot is so well-renown that on average each school in the nation sends two teams for it a year.

Timothy Shipley, computer science teacher, is the school sponsor for the program and the person to contact if you wish to sign up. As of right now, sign-ups have ended for this year.

“Students create teams of four members and are given a problem. The problem can contain things such as a supposed hacked network that students have to fix,” Shipley explained. Other problems in CyberPatriot include malicious users, files, processes, or any other kind of malware that the teams must attempt to remove safely.

After the first round, teams are split into three divisions- silver, gold, and platinum- in which they are scored against other teams in the same division.

The platinum division national winners are rewarded highly. “They receive scholarship grants… and it’s no small amount,” Shipley said.

For any students wishing to sign up for next year’s competition, see Shipley in room 206 for more details on CyberPatriot, or visit www.uscyberpatriot.org.