Out of 5,254 teams that began the CyberPatriot XIV Competition in October 2021, only 28 qualified to compete in the finals March 18-20, in Bethesda, Maryland, according to a PR Newswire article. The La Cueva High School CyberBears are one of those teams.
An online CyberPatriot PDF lists the CyberBears as one of 13 teams who will be competing in the All Service Division Qualifiers. They go up against teams from North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, California and Florida. The La Cueva team is one of two teams in the All Service Division representing the U.S. Marine Corps Junior ROTC. Twelve teams from the U.S. and Canada will compete in the Open Division Qualifiers, and three teams will compete in the Middle School Division Qualifiers.
Good luck to the CyberBears from La Cueva High School (Albuquerque, NM) and the Devil Dogs from Marine Military Academy (Harlingen, TX). These teams are representing the Marine Corps JROTC. pic.twitter.com/gTGZR9P19Q
— CyberPatriot (@CyberPatriot) March 8, 2022
The CyberPatriot XIV Competition is hosted by the Air Force Association’s CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Education Program. An overview of the competition on the CyberPatriot website states the contest, “challenges teams of high school and middle school students to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities in virtual operating systems. Using a proprietary competition system, teams are scored on how secure they make the system.”
There will be two challenges in the six-hour competition which include a Network Security Challenge and a Cisco Networking Challenge. In the network challenge, teams will find and fix security vulnerabilities in Windows and Linux systems, and in the Cisco challenge teams will take a quiz and participate in a virtual network exercise.
CyberPatriot was created to attract students to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and offers high school and middle school summer cybercamps, a Senior Citizens Cybersecurity Safety Initiative and an Elementary School Cyber Education Initiative. The Northrop Grumman Foundation is listed as CyberPatriot’s presenting sponsor.