Submitted Report
At 9 a.m. last Saturday, while many Hays County residents were asleep or just having their coffee, a team of students gathered at San Marcos High School to defend our nation from computer hackers determined to steal our nation’s secrets.
In reality, this was just a dress rehearsal for the real thing.
According to San Marcos High School Sr. Aerospace Science Instructor Anthony “Tony” Williams, Lt Col (r), USAF, this practice competition was Round 1 in a national CyberDefense challenge.
The tournament style competition allows hundreds of young people from across the nation to match skills against each other using their computer security prowess.
Think of it as an online, real-world, real-time video game with the objective of protecting your computer from getting hacked. Students receive training from mentors at the Computer Information Science division at Texas State University.
The students participating in the national tournament were members of an elite group at SMHS called the CyberPatriot Team. CyberPatriot is the premier national high school cyber defense competition created by the Air Force Association to inspire high school students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines critical to our nation’s future. (Courtesy photo)
