(TNS) — A female-led team continues Red River High School's winning streak at the state student cybersecurity competition and is set to showcase its accomplishments.
Red River students Lauryn Brynjulson, Erin Salgado, Olivia Whitney, Briley Chan, and Dimitri Collocca earned top honors at the North Dakota Cyber Madness High School Tournament in February, earning them the Red River's team came out on top for the second time in the tournament's three years.
Five students were recognized with letterman jackets on Wednesday, April 10 at Red River.
“This year has not been a typical year,” said Paul Zettler, team advisor and Red River IT instructor. “This year has been a really great year.”
At this year's Cyber Madness at Bismarck State University, students will compete in a series of mock cybersecurity scenarios and perform tasks such as encrypting and decrypting, identifying and defending against cyberattacks.
The event expanded from about 12 teams in its first year to hundreds of students in 2024.
“These are 21st and 22nd century skill sets,” said Tony Oakland, director of technology at North Dakota Information Technology. “These are the jobs of today and tomorrow.”
Events like Cyber Madness, which offers $1,000 in cash prizes per student and a full-ride scholarship to Fargo's Emerging Digital Academy for the winning team, are designed to produce cybersecurity-savvy students. , is part of an effort by both the state and private companies to preserve it. .
The letterman jacket, for example, is from Palo Alto Networks, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based cybersecurity company that sponsors the Cyber Madness event.
Several members of the winning team already owned the jackets from last year's championship.
UND Associate Professor Prakash Ranganathan, who directs UND's recently established Center for Cybersecurity, said both private companies and places like UND are looking to establish pipelines to programs like Red River. It pointed out.
“(Grand Forks) has a high-quality student population,” Ranganathan said. “We want to make sure we have the best students in our program.”
Red River's team is also notable for being a predominantly female team. Of the five members of the winning team, only one is male.
Most of the current team comes from the school's Girls Who Code Club, of which Zettler is also an advisor. He said the club was “contributive” to the Cyber Madness team's success.
Zettler asked the four female team members how many were in the mostly male class, and three raised their hands.
“It's a problem, it's a real problem,” Zettler said. “There's pressure in cyber madness, and there's pressure on knowing the situation and where you are.”
©2024 Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, North Dakota). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
