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Bio-Med CyberPatriots Hack for Good

Technology fuels society. Everyone uses smartphones, tablets, and laptops almost every day. But technology isn’t always secure. You can’t just delete something from your phone and expect it to be gone. It’s stored deep within the hard drive, where it can be accessed. This opens the door to hacking, which can be detrimental to a person’s life. However, not all hacking is bad.

In 2009 the Air Force Association created the CyberPatriot program to encourage high school students to learn about cyber security and pursue related careers. The National Youth Cyber Defense Competition is the U.S. Air Force’s signature program, drawing more than 2,000 registered teams from schools across the U.S. to compete. Five of those teams hail from the Bio-Med Science Academy, located on the campus of the Northeast Ohio Medical University.

The Bio-Med CyberPatriot club usually meets two times a month, though many students spend time studying materials on their own. It is during club meetings and private study time that students learn to hack, not to do damage, but to understand how to maintain security. Sometimes the club has guest speakers like Enrique Torres, who is the president of Computer Technology Management Services, a cyber security company. Torres spoke to the club members about programs that can make computers more secure and provided the students with insight into keeping technology safe.

The Academy’s STEM curriculum is the perfect fit for a CyberPatriot club, which is one of the biggest clubs at Bio-Med and is composed of 23 students across all grades. The club isn’t only for the technologically inclined. Eleventh-grader Alexandra Wooldredge says most of her team doesn’t want to pursue a career in technology, but instead just want to learn about how to make their own devices more secure. She adds, “You can learn a lot about how to secure your own computer and things like teamwork and perseverance by working with four people for six hours on challenging computer problems.”

Working in teams is a fundamental aspect of the club. Every member relies on each other to solve the challenges they are presented with in competitions. While many may associate technology with reclusiveness, students who are a part of the club disagree. Jake Tronge, a twelfth grader, thinks that the idea of reclusiveness is ridiculous. He says that while teams often divide tasks up between teammates, all of the team works on one main goal by sharing ideas and teaching each other.

Teamwork and communication are important to eleventh-grader McKinley Whipkey, who finds that these qualities directly relate to whether or not a team is successful. She determines success and failure not by how many points the team earns in competition, but by how well the group works together. She says, “Success on a team is when each member is there and engaged in helping one another on how to solve a problem. Failure comes when the team loses focus and stops trying to solve the problems.” At the end of a competition the teams know they did the best they could, and that is the best measure of  success.

By being a part of CyberPatriot club, students learn skills beyond technology. The club fosters collaboration, innovation and problem-solving skills in all of its members. These skills are essential not only to being good at protecting technology, but to being a good member of society. As members of the CyberPatriot club, the Academy’s students learn to hack with good intentions and to protect themselves and others from harm.

–Gillian Seibel is a senior at the Bio-Med Science Academy and an intern in the NEOMED Office of Marketing and Communications.