Cybersecurity Team Enjoys Success in National Competition

For three months, the Upper School Cybersecurity Team participated in weekly events as part of the CyberPatriot XIII competition, created by the Air Force Association (AFA) to inspire K-12 students toward careers in cybersecurity or other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines critical to our nation’s future. The competition challenges teams of high school and middle school students to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities in virtual operating systems. Using a proprietary competition system, teams are scored on how secure they make the system.

Their hard work and skill culminated with one MFS team placing second in the New Jersey Open Division Platinum Tier, while the other placed 11th in the Open Division Gold Tier. The teams are grouped into tiers based on their success in previous monthly meets. Winners were also recognized in a recent blog post by the New Jersey Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Cell which is part of the NJ Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.

Team members include: 
Yusuf-Zain Ansari ’22
Kian Canelas ’21
Christine Chandran ’21
Brent Cohen ’21
Amari Coleman ’24
Annabelle Crescenzo ’21
Bella Dunn ’21
Lauren Kam ’21
Tylar Pierce ’22
Olivia Rutherford ’21
Daniel Sorokin ’23
Emily Zeiberg ’21

Over 2580 North American teams competed and the MFS teams scored in the top 11%.