JEFFERSON TWP — A team of six Knoch High School students will move on to the state competition in the CyberPatriot program.

The students, who are coached by computer science teacher Laura Gaston, are tasked with finding vulnerabilities in the simulated computer systems of imitation companies.

The CyberPatriot program is a national youth cyber education program created by the Air Force Association to inspire students toward careers in cyber security or other science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, according to the CyberPatriot website.

The Knoch team, which competed for the first time this year, completed rounds one and two in November and December, and scored in the top 75 percent.

This means the team will move on to the state competition in January, which will determine whether they will compete on the national level in April.

Gaston said she discussed the competition in coding class earlier this year, and six students signed up to compete as a result.

The students act as cyber security professionals who must debug and discover glitches and issues in the simulated computer pages with which they are presented.

The competition is meant to help U.S. companies with a 200,000-employee shortfall in the field of cyber security.

Senior Jacob Archer had a bit of an advantage over his teammates because he has attended the one-week cyber security camp offered during the past two summers at the University of Pittsburgh.

The Pitt events had a competition similar to CyberPatriot at the end of each camp, so signing up for the CyberPatriot competition was a no-brainer for Jacob.

“I like competitions and knew I wanted to do something with them,” he said.

Jacob explained that the camps teach participants which cyber security risks might be found on computer systems and which tools to use to correct them as well as the various operating systems and cyber security risks prevalent in each one.

Jacob plans to enter the cyber security field after completing his studies in the subject at Mercyhurst College in Erie.

Kade Hilterman, a junior, said the CyberPatriot competition involved finding security problems in the simulated images, such as the absence of passwords and firewalls.

The teams also searched for evidence of hacking software and were tasked with making at-risk computer systems secure.

Kade was surprised the Knoch team did so well among the more than 4,000 teams that competed, as it was the school's first try.

“We went into it not knowing a whole lot about cyber security,” he said.

The team's sole preparation was working with practice pages sent by the CyberPatriot program.

“It's hard getting over that learning curve if you don't know a whole lot about it,” Kade said.

The most common issues found by the teams, Kade said, were the lack of employee passwords, no administration rights for company leaders and finding software downloaded that should not be on the company computers.

“Some stuff was really embedded,” Kade said. “You figure it out as you go.”

He said that while he was not previously interested in the cyber security field, the competition has nudged him in that direction.

“I thought maybe it is something I might be interested in,” Kade said.

Gaston said she is proud of her team's ability to come in 1,954th place out of 4,234 participants.

“That includes all divisions, so I am not sure how we fared amongst just other high schools,” Gaston said. “But I'm pretty happy with their work for the first time participating.”

She said the main benefits of the CyberPatriot competition for team members were learning that good jobs are available in cyber security and generally broadening the students' horizons.

“And they liked the pizza for lunch,” she said.

The Knoch High School team members in the CyberPatriot competition are Kade, Jacob, Matthew Cummings, Nicholas Pawlowski, Amelia Walls and Braden Zukowski.

More information on the CyberPatriot program is available at www.uscyberpatriot.org.