Friday Feature: CyberPatriot

Colleen HroncichIt sounds clich é, but the world is changing rapidly. Careers that are now essential didn’t even exist when I was young. That makes it tough for parents and teachers to ensure kids are prepared for the future. This can be particularly challenging for homeschoolers or kids in rural areas who don ’t have the resources often found in larger schools.When my then ‐​15‐​year‐​old daughter expressed interest in cyber security, we found a program calledCyberPatriot, which is sponsored by the Air Force Association. Kids form teams, learn about cyber security, and work in online competitions to find and fix security flaws in virtual machines.At first, I was intimidated by the prospect since I know very little about computers beyond using standard programs. My daughter solved this problem by contacting a computer science professor at a local college to see if he ’d serve as a mentor. To my surprise, he immediately agreed. The mentor met with my daughter and her teammates and helped them understand the concepts involved in the competition. He showed the kids which training modules would be most important for the initial competition round.CyberPatriot is verylow ‐​cost, and they offer fee waivers for teams that demonstrate need. The competitions are online, so there aren ’t travel expenses involved. There’s also a lot of flexibility since the competition can be completed at your convenience within a 6 ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs