LOCAL TECHNOLOGY CLUB SCORES HIGH IN UK-WIDE COMPETITION
14 December 2023
Code Club, a local educational charity recently held the first qualifying round in the tenth year of the CyberCenturion competition. Each year, the club takes part in this contest, a national cyber security challenge, which presents teams of up to four secondary school students with tasks such as system hardening, securing user accounts, and forensic screening, to name a few. Teams can compete in either the junior (14 and under) or senior (18 and under) divisions, as one of four categories: all boy, all girl, mixed or cadet teams.
CyberCenturion is a national cyber education initiative for 12–18-year-olds, designed to excite, educate, and motivate students to pursue further education and careers in STEM and cybersecurity.
This year, for the club’s ninth year taking part in the competition, they fielded six teams, including experienced teams, such as ‘I am Root’, and novice teams, like ‘The BrotherBoard’, both in the junior boys category. For the first time ever, the club is proud to present teams in three different categories: all boys, all girls, and mixed teams.
For the first round in CyberCenturion X, the club’s top two teams, ‘CyberAces’ (senior boys) and ‘I am Root’ (junior boys) both hit a top score of 200 points, in a time of 2 hours exactly, and 1 hour and 48 minutes respectively. This placed the teams in second and third place overall.
The club’s remaining teams also performed well in the challenge, with team ‘$udo’ (senior boys) scoring 154 points, and the other three junior teams, ‘The BrotherBoard’, ‘The Cubes’ and ‘Slaying Alphas’ (all boys, mixed and all-girls respectively) scoring between 79 and 85 points.
“I’m so excited that CyberCenturion is back for another year”, shared Adam Drummond, coordinator of CyberCenturion at Code Club. “The competition brings an experience to these students that they would not get in school, and it is fantastic to see just how passionate these teams are; ‘I am Root’ attempted to complete the challenge in under one hour, and missed that mark by one vulnerability.”
“Once again, our CyberCenturion teams have made us proud!”, added Owen Cutajar, Chair of Code Club. “We had a range of achievements, from past champions excelling in their category, all the way to brand new contestants who pulled together and demonstrated amazing resilience while learning new skills. Watching them rise up to the challenge was truly inspiring, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they achieve in the next round.”
“Our thanks go to everyone who made this event possible”, he continued. “Our tireless volunteers selflessly give up their time to organise, help and motivate our members. A special mention goes to King William's College, who hosted the competition; and to Domino's Pizza, who helped us feed a horde of hungry contestants. We're grateful for your support and for helping us to provide a fantastic opportunity for Manx youths.”
Further information:
Code Club is a Manx educational charity (number 1322) focussed on empowering individuals in the technological space. They aim to provide a focal point for people of all ages to develop digital skills, share their knowledge and experience, and to teach others how to leverage the technology that surrounds them. If you are interested in helping with sponsorship, please contact sponsorship@codeclub.im
CyberCenturion is a cyber defence competition. It was established by the Air Force Association. The Northrop Grumman Foundation is the Presenting Sponsor for CyberCenturion.
https://stem.org.uk/cyber-centurion
