Holmdel High Cybersecurity Team Finishes First In NJ

HOLMDEL, NJ — The Air Force Association has announced the winners of this year's Cyber Patriot State Championship, with Holmdel High School’s Cybersecurity Team taking first place in New Jersey. The team from Holmdel High School beat 67 other high school and military academy teams from across the state.

The National Cyber Patriot Competition was created by the Air Force Association to foster interest in American young people to study and train in the cybersecurity field. At the center of Cyber Patriot is the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. The competition puts teams of high school and middle school students in the position of newly hired IT professionals tasked with managing the network of a small company. In the rounds of competition, teams are given a set of virtual images that represent operating systems and are tasked with finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the images and hardening the system while maintaining critical services. This all must be done in a timed six-hour period.

“The dedication that this team made to obtain the skills they needed to compete at such a high level still has me in awe," said team adviser Steve Lelivelt, who is also the computer engineer (head IT guy) for the Holmdel school district. “Congratulations to Michael Dasaro, Len Huang, Jerome Li, Jack Lowry, Cyrus Majd and Jonathan Marty for a job well done."

Not only did they come in first in the state, the Holmdel High team finished the competition in the top 2.6 percent of 3,205 teams from around the world.

The team will next head to Baltimore for the national finals competition, where they have the chance to earn scholarship money.

Aerospace and defense technology giant Northrop Grumman is a prime sponsor of the competition.

Photo of the team provided by the Holmdel school district.