Cybersecurity Team Takes It to the Next Level

John Chiodo, faculty advisor and director of innovation, engineering and computer science, acknowledged that the students’ hard work paid off. “Sometimes when teams are trying to find the last two security vulnerabilities and have been at it an hour without success, they have a tendency to feel frustrated and defeated,” he explained. “This team is different, and doesn’t give up.”

The upper school team consisting of three seniors, three juniors, one sophomore and two freshmen did very well, earning 291 out of 300 available points. 

This puts Masters in the top 5% in the country out of the more than 3,400 teams. Currently, they are five points behind the first place team in New York.

CyberPatriot is a national showdown that presents high school and middle school students with a series of online competition rounds. Teams are given a set of virtual operating systems and tasked with finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities while maintaining critical services.  

As the Masters team prepares for Round 2 on November 6, they have a lot of work ahead of them before they compete with other top teams in the nation to earn national recognition and scholarship money. They’re currently consolidating checklists, revising their scripts  and doing additional research. “Half of the team is new this year, so there is still a lot of learning going on with each round,” said Chiodo. “The students do a great job of teaching each other.”

Teddy Meyer ’24 put it best. “When the team puts its mind together to solve an issue, we almost always can find a solution,” he said. “I am optimistic about our team's chances this year to at least make it to the National Semifinals, if not further, and move up to the Platinum Division.”