Regians Set New Benchmark at Annual CyberPatriot Competition

Above: Members of Regis's CyberPatriot Team #1: Thibault Forgeas '16, Stephen Utley '16, Paolo Caponong '16, John Cerjak '16, and Luke D’Cruz '17 (not pictured: Joshua Zeitlinger '16).

Earlier this year, a team of Regians participated in the annual CyberPatriot competition. CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program which runs an annual competition putting 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. Teams compete for the top placement within their state and region, and the top teams in the nation earn all-expenses paid trips to Baltimore, MD for the National Finals Competition where they can earn national recognition and scholarship money.

This year, the Regis team was successful in becoming the first Regis team to participate in the competition’s Platinum Tier. This is the top tier for all participants, and required a high score on a both a security and networking test. With confidence in the strength of their performance, Team #1  secured second place in the New York State round and earned a spot in the Platinum Tier's Regional round. Though they did not move beyond the Regional round, the team was happy with what they had accomplished.

"The team is very grateful to have had the opportunity to make it so far in the competition again, and to have learned so much from what we encountered," said John Cerjak '16.

"I'm very satisfied with our performance," said Thibault Forgeas '16. "The experience has me considering a career in computer security."

When asked about how the team was able to come so far this year, Paolo Caponong '16 remarked, "I really think that our level of teamwork and commitment set us apart from the other groups competing. Over the course of the past months, we’ve come together to work as a team and have definitely improved as a result."

Above: Members of Regis's CyberPatriot Team #2: Gianluca Rago '17, Chris Hayden '17, Owen Burek '16, Nathan Duarte '17, Yeon Jun Kim '17 and Michael Cosgrove '17