September 22nd – Practice Image and Unit Presentation

An estimation of 20 students arrived at B-23 to be able to continue their practices with the Windows Practice Image and studying a new unit for Cyberpatriot. Club President Isaiah Gutierrez began presenting Unit 7 which was based on Microsoft Windows Security Tools. For Cyberpatriot, the main goal is to be able to secure a computer so users can be able to use it safely and give a difficult time for attackers to be able to access the system. For this unit, Gutierrez presented how to access Control Panel and Local Security Panel and use the built-in security features that Windows provides such as firewall and password policies. This would help benefit members so that they can be able to earn points and achieve the goal of securing the system. Another key factor that was presented in the presentation was user accounts, the club president was able to cover how there would be accounts that are not allowed to have access to an OS and how to change the account to administrator or standard.

After the presentations, members went back to practices on the Windows Practice image from Troy High School. Today, officers had the members do Forensics Questions that would also be a part of the Cyberpatriot Rounds. To summarize, Forensics Questions are questions that present bigger problems that affect the OS may have such as finding a hidden file that may affect the company in the scenario given in the round or finding a backdoor that allows attackers to have easy access to the OS and its files. For this image, members had to decrypt a secret message, and to do so they had to figure out which method was used to decrypt the image. As for the second forensics question, members also had to find a hidden file in the system which contained the answer to the Forensic Question.

Due to Back To School Night, not a lot was done. However, with an hour, the club was able to make great progress by refreshing the memory of returning members and give a better idea to new members what is expected from them and what they need to do in order to earn points for each round in Cyberpatriot.