September 15 Meeting – Cyberpatriot Presentations and Practice Images

Approximately 18 students arrived at the meeting prepared for today’s materials that club officers have organized. Club President Isaiah Gutierrez has started off the meeting by introducing Cyberpatriot to new members so they can be aware of the competition that they will be participating in a month or so. Not only that he also discussed the importance of Cybersecurity and how not have security can affect many people who do not protect their devices. He eventually moved on to discussing the importance of online safety and how to prevent attackers from gaining access to personal information such as credit card numbers, addresses, account information, etc.

For the next two units, vice president David Forero discussed Cyber Ethics and the Principles of Cyber Security. Forero discusses the importance of ethics and how they are applied to cybersecurity, teaching members how to make good decisions and to not take advantage of the online tools to find personal information or break into an account that has been protected with a password. After that, he moves on to Unit 4 which talks about the Principles of Cyber Security. In this unit, members learned the CIA triad which explains the three goals of cybersecurity which are confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Forero eventually moves on to teaching the different types of attacks, threats and risks that occur in cybersecurity such as the social engineering methods (phishing, spear-phishing, etc.), viruses, trojan horses, backdoors, and botnets.

After the presentations, with some time left, club officers gave instructions on how to download and start up the Cyberpatriot Practice Image from Troy High School. This image is similar to what an actual image would look like when participating in the CP rounds. As a club, Mr. Smith and the club officers demonstrated the steps on how to disable Guest Accounts and removing users that do not belong so the OS can be more secured from attackers and complete the requirements of the README.

Windows 10 Practice Image from Troy High School