LT’s CyberPatriots advance to Round 3 of nationwide competition

Two Lyons Township High School CyberPatriot teams recently competed in a nationwide competition and both squads advanced to the next round. Qualifying at the two highest levels - the Platinum Tier and the Gold Tier – LT was among nearly 1,700 teams from across the nation participating in the Open Division.

Results for the national competition will be released next month, with the finals being held in Bethesda, MD in mid-March. The 12 highest scoring Open Division teams from the Platinum Tier advance to the National Finals Competition based on their Round 3 scores. The Platinum tier is assigned to the top 30% scoring teams in the Open Division.

Through a series of online competition rounds, teams are given a set of virtual operating systems and are tasked with finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities while maintaining critical services. Each event occurs during a six-hour window. squads access the challenges in virtualized environments around the world.

LT’s CyberPatriots Club is based around the national CyberPatriots organization founded by the Air Force Association as part of the National Youth Cyber Education Program. The focus is to expose students to methods and techniques for securing technology systems, protecting cyber assets and encouraging exploration of cyber security education and careers, which they achieve through the groups’ regular meetings and competitions.

Sponsor Michael Vasich said, “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are relying on technology more than ever for crucial parts of our lives and securing our digital identities has never been more important. The CyberPatriot club starts members on the path of understanding what it takes to secure the systems we use from known threats and learn how to react to new ones. Through hard work our teams have accomplished a great deal and I hope they will continue push themselves to success in the next round.”

Blue Squadron

Angela Angelovska, Sophomore (Indian Head Park)

Brandon Hornickle, Sophomore (LaGrange)

Grace Newman, Senior (Western Springs)

Ethan Rosenkranz, Sophomore (LaGrange)

Marija Stojanoska, Sophomore (Indian Head Park)

Gold Squadron

Ana Babnigg, Junior (Countryside)

Daniel Babnigg, Senior (Countryside)

Ian Doherty, Senior (LaGrange)

Kevin Fatora, Senior (Countryside)

Gavin Monthye, Senior (LaGrange)