The November 2020 cyber attack on the City of Saint John may have been just a headline for many, but for a group of students at Nashwaaksis Middle School, defending against such an attack could mean a career. It shapes our ambitions.
As organizations increase their reliance on technology, a ransomware attack that took down the city's website and affected its emergency dispatch system forced the city to rebuild its network and launch a new website. .
of Attack cost St. John Million In the end, it was determined that the breach was caused by a phishing email.
These are the types of security breaches that two teams of smart 6th-8th graders are training to detect during lunch breaks and after-school practices.
Eighth-grader Caleb Jeffries sits in front of his computer in a dimly lit classroom. He stares at lines of code and commands on his computer, practicing for a national competition that will test his cybersecurity skills.
He hopes he and his team can win CyberTitan, a cybersecurity competition for middle and high school students, again.
Two Nashwaaksis Middle School teams are preparing for the national championship round of CyberTitan, a cybersecurity competition for middle and high school students.
This time last year, he remembers sitting in the school theater nervously waiting for his results.
“When they called our name, [for first place]“It was really amazing,” Jeffries said. “And I knew all my hard work had paid off.”
Aiming for the gold medal again
Earlier this year, Jeffries and his team, the Cyber Dragons, are once again preparing for the national tournament after taking first place in their division in the semifinals.
Ten high school teams and three middle school teams will advance to the national competition. Two of the middle school teams are from Nashwaaksis, and Atlantic is the only team from Canada to advance to the finals.
The competition includes several hours of scenarios in which students are responsible for identifying and resolving cyber threats thrown at them.
Gary Gautreaux, the school's technology teacher and CyberTitan coach, said this is the seventh year the school has held the competition, and over the last seven years, 13 teams have finished in the top three and qualified for the national competition. Ta. In addition to that, Nashwaaksis has won four national championships, he said.
“As a coach and as a teacher, I am so proud of their hard work and dedication,” Gautro said.
“The group we have now has been here almost every day during their lunch break this year, and four or five days a week after school for an hour and a half, depending on their preference.”
For Morgan Weatherhead, one of five sixth-graders in the Firewall Fighters, this is her first year competing as a CyberTitan and her first year competing in the national competition.
Weatherhead said he has learned a lot about today's technology since joining the club.
“I think the never-ending feeling is really cool,” they said. “I learned a lot about how to find vulnerabilities in computers, how to investigate them and find ways to deal with them.”
Cyber security experts are in demand
Detecting software threats is similar to monitoring traffic flow, said David Shipley, cybersecurity expert and CEO of New Brunswick-based Beauceron Security. said.
“Imagine looking at the cyber equivalent of Google Street View,” he said. “I watch things come and go. As I watch my daily morning commute and activities occur, I notice something strange.
“And then when you start getting drawn into it, you realize something bad is happening, things are getting worse, for lack of a better word, cyber bank robbery.”
Then comes the reaction, which can be difficult because sometimes things look bad, but he says it's just a false alarm.
And sometimes things can be really bad, and “a few critical minutes when protecting your organization can make the difference between a near miss and a horrific multi-day ransomware incident that costs your organization millions of dollars.” Yes,” Shipley said.
In Cyber Titan, where Mr. Weatherhead, Mr. Jeffries and their team compete, the students are forced into their first day on the job as cybersecurity experts, but when things start to go awry, Cyber Titan and the Information Center's Cyber Education said Sheena Bolton, program manager for the initiative. and the Communications Technology Council.
This year, students will be tasked with identifying and mitigating threats after a breach at a local airport, but the rest won't be known until Nashwaaksis students begin investigating.
Bolton said the scenario is based on real-life cases that have occurred internationally or nationally, and he hopes that if students continue to move into the cybersecurity field, they will already have an advantage. Ta.
One year, she said, the children were put on a mock cruise ship, where their credit card information started changing and disappearing, and they had to figure it out.
Bolton said the pandemic has increased the need for cybersecurity professionals, with more small and medium-sized businesses seeking protection in the event of a hack.
Shipley echoed this sentiment, saying the need continues to grow.
“There is currently a shortage of 3 million skilled cybersecurity workers globally, and the problem is getting worse every year as our society becomes increasingly reliant on technology in every aspect of life.” said Shipley.
He said many people think that cybersecurity professionals are made up only of engineers or computer scientists, but the field needs people of all kinds.
These jobs include planners and inspectors, people who work on the detection side of things, people with more technical skills who can respond to a crisis when something bad happens, and people who are able to figure out what went wrong. This includes people who try to figure it out after the fact.
“Everyone has a role in cyber.”
And Caleb Jeffries thinks he'll continue doing cybersecurity in high school and perhaps beyond.
“I would like to pursue that career because there are a lot of jobs needed in that industry.”
In the meantime, he will defend his title when he competes at the University of New Brunswick's hub in early May.
