CyberPatriot National Finals to Be Held Virtually

ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Air Force Association announced today that the CyberPatriot XIII National Finals Competition will be held virtually on March 20-21, 2021. This is the second year that the National Finals have transitioned to a virtual format due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

AFA's CyberPatriot Program Office has modified the National Youth Cyber Competition to ensure the health and safety of the students throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.  The competition puts teams of high school and middle school students in the position of newly hired IT professionals tasked with managing the network of a small company. Through a series of online competition rounds, teams are given a set of virtual operating systems and networks and are tasked with finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities while maintaining critical services.  During the CyberPatriot XIII season during the 2020-2021 school year, CyberPatriot extended the registration period to allow more time for team formation since many schools were facing virtual or hybrid school learning models. One of the three rounds of competition was eliminated to allow students more time to create teams to accommodate teams that could not gather together to compete due to virtual only or hybrid learning models. CyberPatriot also modified rules, allowing teams to compete in a variety of settings including students competing from their homes.

"The need for the skills CyberPatriot teaches students has only increased during this terrible pandemic, as more people than ever are turning to online platforms to do business and to meet social needs," said Bernie Skoch, CyberPatriot National Commissioner. "We are working very hard to make our virtual competition as effective as we can make it, and we are deeply grateful for the continuing support of our generous sponsors and benefactors as we adjust. Our nation needs CyberPatriot now more than ever."

CyberPatriot is planning a robust virtual National Finals Competition which will once again include the Network Security Master Challenge, the Cisco NetAcad Challenge, the AT&T Mobile Computing Challenge, the TCP/IP (The Career Portal/Industry Perspective) event with CyberPatriot Sponsors, an Opening Ceremony, and an Awards Ceremony. The top overall teams in the Open and All Service Divisions will receive scholarships from Northrop Grumman and the top Open and All Service Division teams in the Cisco NetAcad Challenge will receive scholarships from Cisco.

SOURCE Air Force Association

Related Links

http://www.afa.org

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