They really get IT
GOSHEN — Six Career and Technical Education Engineering Academy students, standouts in their Cisco/CCNA Computer Networking Program, recently placed first in the Northeast Region in the 2016 CyberPatriot National Youth Cyber Defense Competition.
Members of the team are: Brendan Rasenberger (junior) from Warwick Valley High School, Elmer Palmer (senior) from Chester Academy and Pine Bush High School students Camerin Figueroa (junior), Edward Green (senior) Mark Hyatt (senior) and Magnus Roberto (junior).
The team began competing in November 2015 in the opening round of the CyberPatriot cyber security competition.
CyberPatriot is a Youth Cyber Education Program conceived by the Air Force Association to inspire high school students toward careers in cyber security or other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines critical to the future and security of the United States.
The competition placed teams of students in the roles of newly hired IT professionals charged with managing the network of a simulated small company.
Teams were provided a set of virtual images representing operating systems and were challenged to find cyber security vulnerabilities within the images and hardening the system while maintaining critical continuation of services for the company.
In the first round, the BOCES CTE team placed in the top third of 1,254 teams from across the US, Canada, Japan and Germany.
Their high scores in the first two rounds placed them in the Gold Tier in the New York State and Northeast regional rounds where they ultimately placed first in the entire Northeast Region and seventh overall in the nation in the Gold Tier.
The students competed under the guidance of their instructor Robert McMann.
"Entering this competition greatly enhanced these students' classroom curriculum by teaching them the vital nature of IT security," McMann said. "Each round of the competition was a non-stop, six-hour session where students applied their knowledge and skills to locate, identify and correct various cyber security vulnerabilities within different operating systems and networking images. I'm proud of these students and confident they will be valuable assets to any profession they choose in the future."