SAHS CyberPatriots head to Orlando for semifinal competition

More than 450 high school "CyberPatriot" teams signed up for preliminary competition a few months ago; now just 12 teams remain, among them a squad from the Naval Junior ROTC unit at South Aiken High School.

Capt. Zachary Coleman and his teammates will head to Orlando, Fla., on Wednesday for the national semifinal competition - testing the students' skills over two days in warding off virtual cyber security attacks. The top five teams will move on to the national finals at National Harbor, Md., near Washington, D.C.

Based on the team's performance in the first two rounds, "we know we're one of the stronger teams coming into this," Coleman said. "It will be interesting and quite a challenge, but it will be fun, too."

The competition started off in October with the cadets participating in an online contest with a single computer and relatively limited numbers of hacks and bugs. They qualified for the next round, this time with three computers and more viruses targeting them. The semifinals will escalate the pressure on all of the teams, said Zachary's dad, Randy Coleman, who works in cyber security at the Savannah River Site.

"The new contest will have 12 systems to fix and defend from attacks and five systems in their administrative work stations to defend as well," Coleman said. "Our students will look for viruses of Trojan horses, and, while trying to fix those, a 'red team' (of CyberPatriot officials) will try to attack them and make more problems for them."

The teams will play for four hours Thursday and wrap up with another three hours-plus on Friday. Another cadet, Matt Bauerlin, said the much harder scenario is offset to some degree by the experience he and his teammates have gained.

"This competition will be different with live aggressors, people trying to hack into our computers," he said. "But I know volumes more than when I came into this."

Cyber Patriot is sponsored by the Air Force Association in conjunction with Northrop Grumman, bringing together the top two teams from each service - Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Army and Civil Air Patrol - plus two "wild card" teams.

The other team members are Josh Livingston, Anthony DeStasio, Mark Reboul, Joshua Huffines, Chris Franklin and Cody Wilkins.

Reboul, the squad's only ninth-grader, joined the ROTC unit last fall with few expectations.

"But I like it a lot, all the physical exercise and the chance to join the academic teams," he said. "I look forward to CyberPatriot practices and can't wait to get to the tournament in Orlando. I plan to do this all four years of high school."

When ROTC commander Larry Laughlin learned about the CyberPatriot competitions, he couldn't pass it up.

"We're grateful to be this successful and have the opportunity to advance to the final round," he said. "It's a fun way for the cadets to learn more about computers."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.