CWDHS fields largest team yet in national cyber security competition
November 5, 2019
FERGUS, Ontario – Centre Wellington District High School has amassed its largest group of students yet for competition in a national cyber security competition.
This year CW has 23 students participating in CyberTitan, a comprehensive online competition where students across North America compete in cyber security challenges. This year’s teams are the Kingsguard (senior team), Terabytches2.0 (all female team), Altron (junior team) and Ladz (junior team).
CyberTitan operates in affiliation with the US Air Force Association’s CyberPatriot program. The collaboration of national cyber education programs works to promote education and awareness in Information and Communications Technology education and encourage students to pursue careers in cyber security or other STEM areas.
At the end of October, CWDHS’s CyberTitan teams competed in a marathon 6-hour continuous online competition.
Throughout the competition, students tackle a variety of cybersecurity challenges. Teams receive virtual image files infected with different viruses. They work together to identify the bad code, write patches, and prevent hacking into their systems in real time. They work in Windows and Linux as well as with Cisco software. Members of the team bring with them different strengths, some specializing in Windows, Linux or Cisco, some were research specialists, able to research quickly and effectively if they ran into problems.
According to CWDHS teacher Timothy King, round one of competition was their best to date.
Kingsguard finished first in Eastern Canada, the Terabytches finished in the top 50 and are on track to take another run at their national title of top female team in Canada, and both junior teams were fantastic, scoring in the top half and beating teams from across Canada who are two to three years older than they are.
The competition consists of multiple rounds. As the rounds progress, challenges get increasingly more difficult to the point of military level cyber-attacks. Depending on the results from the preliminary rounds, teams could advance to compete in the Canadian CyberTitan finals. Only the top 10 teams across Canada are invited to the nationals.
For the last two years, CWDHS has sent a team to the finals. Last year, the Terabytches made it to the finals after finishing as the top female team in the country, and the year before that a CW team placed fifth overall and made it to the finals in Fredericton.
The competition picks up again on Nov. 15 for round 2, and round 3 in December. The Canadian nationals will be held in May.
Good luck CWDHS CyberTitans!