The CyberPatriot National High School Cyber Defense Competition
White, G.B.; Williams, D.; Harrison, K.;
Security & Privacy, IEEE
Volume: 8 , Issue: 5
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/MSP.2010.166
Publication Year: 2010 , Page(s): 59 – 61
IEEE JOURNALS
AbstractPlus | Full Text: PDF (194 KB)
I selected the paper “The CyberPatriot National High School Cyber Defense Competition” by Professors White et al of the University of Texas at San Antonio for my week 5 journal reading.
Following my last post on this knowledge building forum, I am still in search of a cybersecurity curriculum for the undergraduates. My company, Northrop Grumman, provides significant funding to boost the CyberPatriot competition for the next three years. I selected the article thinking it may help fill my knowledge gap in developing a syllabus for our class assignment and also satisfy my curiosity about my company’s roles in cyber defense competitions.
The article tracks the historical establishment of CyberPatriot since 2005 to the current plan for the 2011 competition. A shortage of trained cybersecurity professionals has alarmed both government agencies and industries. To excite and motivate interest in cybersecurity for students who have not decided their career choices, the CyberPatriot National High School Cyber Defense Competition (www. Uscyberpatriot.org) has obtained support from the government (e.g., the US Air Force) and industry to expand the competition to the national level and open it to any interested teams enrolled in a US high school, for the 2011 competition.
In contrast to collegiate competitions in other disciplines, the high school programs emphasize the need to have a strong education or training component. This is because few high school teachers have cybersecurity background and students have less exposure or experience to the very subject in which they would compete. Regrettably the article merely cites kinds of media students use to learn in preparation for competitions, including videos, presentations, and manuals, but without mention the content of those materials, from which I had hoped to draw in creating a syllabus.
So…I am still in search of cybersecurity curriculum for the undergraduates.
This writing may have been done primarily as a good news, public relations article to promote the competition and its role in introducing High School to the cyber security world. If that’s the case, than it wasn’t expected to be a scholarly type of journal article where you would find what you are looking for.