Girls Go Draws Many Academy Cyber Security Enthusiasts

#SacredHeartsAcademy Cyber Lancers

When the command came to “go” at 4 a.m. on February 20, the Academy’s aspiring computer “techies” were “off and running” in the inaugural #GirlsGoCyberStart challenge!

The 15 teams of Lancers in grades nine to 12 joined over 5,700 other students from across the nation on this week-long cyber “quest.” Their goal was to tackle fun and interactive online challenges as “cyber protection agents” tasked with protecting an important operation base.

In the process, participants explored the exciting worlds of code-cracking, cyber security tools, security flaw detection, digital forensics and more. While all of the Academy’s cyber protection agents displayed superb security skills, two teams – the CyberBeans and Yikes the CyberGhosts – scored in the top 100 in the nation out of 2,355 teams and were sixth and seventh among Hawai’i competitors.

To assist the Lancer effort, Deborah Kula hosted a week-long “Cyberthon” in her classroom after school hours. She set a theme for each day and provided added motivation in keeping with this theme, including “cyber-ghetti sauce with password pasta” on “Exploits Wednesday” and “malware marshmallows” and “vanilla virus ice cream” on “Spyware Friday.”

#SacredHeartsAcademy Cyber Lancers

Kula remarked, “Many participants in this program came from the Cyberpatriot teams, but many had no prior experience. This is a testament to all of our students being encouraged to take risks!"

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