Dozens of RI Schools Compete in CyberPatriot State Tourney

MIDDLETOWN, RI—This weekend, thousands of U.S. students are participating in the Cyber Patriot state tournaments.

According to the website, 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 in a six hour period."

Translation: they're supposed to keep the e-mail and other services running while they deal with hackers.

A year or two ago, the stuff they're working on might have seemed geeky, but since the 2016 election, cybersecurity has become prominent in the news, as Congress scrutinizes the safety of U.S. computer systems and looks for ways to deal with hackers. It's also part of a big job market, which promises to offer high-paying jobs to cyber experts.

This weekend, dozens of Rhode Islanders came to play and hoped to punch a ticket to the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. In all 4,404 teams competed nationwide. Rhode Island fielded 53 teams.

All Saints in Middletown also put four teams into the competition, according to Mike Cullen, who volunteers as advisor.

"There's an all girls team that does really well, two mixed teams and a new grade 4-5 team that's showing strong promise," he said.

The tournament has been going on all weekend and scores are posted online. Cullen scheduled All Saints in the competition for Sunday because some of the youngsters were attending Saturday's LEGO Robotics tournament at Roger Williams University. (All Saints was one of the LEGO winners.)

He's hoping to start a new team next year at the Gaudet Middle School in Middletown "to feed the team at Middletown High School," he said.

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