CyberPatriot is a national competition for students who participate in cyber defense. This year the RMHS team, 101sec, placed top 12 for the national finalists in the open division. These teams come from all over the world to compete against each other for recognition and scholarship money.

RMHS currently has three different teams coached by computer teacher Michael Drenth. According to Drenth, around 4800 teams registered this year to compete, but due to COVID, only about 3000 teams completed the qualifying rounds.

“The district has had quite a bit of success in the past few years, with either one of our teams, or teams from Hersey finishing first in the state,” Drenth said.

According to the CyberPatriot website, teams that are at the top at nationals receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Maryland where they compete for the Finals National Competition. In order to receive such achievements, students from middle schools and high schools have to understand cybersecurity. CyberPatriot offers camps for students who would like to compete nationally.

In addition to having a background in cybersecurity, contestants have to have a team and an experienced coach. The competitions heavily rely upon being able to spot cybersecurity vulnerabilities quickly and being able to fix them to the best of their ability. They are scored on their ability to make a system secure and the extent of the security of the system.

“The kids are given images of different operating systems, the last round was an image of Windows 10, Windows Server, Linux Ubuntu and Linux Debian,” Drenth said. “They first have to solve a series of Forensics questions regarding the images, and then they essentially have to go through each and find as many security vulnerabilities as possible.”

The RMHS teams have been competing in CyberPatriot for the past 6 years, and during this year all of the competing RMHS teams qualified for the Platinum division (the highest scoring division). The RMHS team 101secs finished 11th in the national finalist open division and was 6th best going into nationals.