Gazette Januar y 2021
25
AC A DE M IC E XC E L L E NC E
CyberTaipan
Over the course of Terms 3 and 4, Year 9 students Chris Yoo, Michael Liu, Achyuth Kadambi, Elijah Bradford, and Vedant Vaghela represented King’s in the CSIRO’s Australian cyber security competition (CyberTaipan) that is modelled on the US Air Force Association’s CyberPatriot program.
CyberTaipan puts teams of high schoolaged students in the position of newly hired IT professionals, tasked with managing the computer network of a company. In particular, they need to secure computer networks and solve forensic challenges while defending against computer hackers and maintaining critical network services. Research has shown that “CyberTaipan is based on a proven framework for educating and inspiring high school-aged students towards further education and careers in cyber security and other STEM subjects.” Impact reports from the CyberPatriot program (US) also confirm that participants are far more likely to: • Pursue
STEM education after high school
• Pursue
4-year higher education than their peers
• Feed
into the cyber security and technical workforce
Students competed in a gruelling 18-hour contest over three weekends, and I am happy to report that King’s achieved 7th place amongst 105 teams and 525 competitors across Australia in the initial round of the competition, booking them a place in the finals. After a shaky start in the final, The King’s School (Kernel Krushers) were awarded the CyberTaipan 2020 National Champions title. This is a fantastic result, considering many of the competitors were older and more experienced than our Year 9 students.
“We had a lot of fun defending different systems during the painstaking 6-hour rounds, and I would certainly do it again. Whilst it was very frustrating at times when we were stuck on one problem for hours on end, we managed to push through the challenges. The key takeaway from this competition was not to lose hope or give up until the end,” said Year 9 student, Chris Yoo. Another student, Michael Liu, Year 9 said, “Certainly a unique experience for all of us. We entered the competition to give it a try; I would’ve never imagined we would come 1st in this competition. Although we devoted a lot of time to CyberTaipan, we enjoyed the moments when we met up, both at School and online, solved problems and climbed the scoreboard.” A big thank you to their Coach, Mr Ronzini who had the boys prepared perfectly throughout the season and the ICT Services Department for their assistance with the technical setup and support, and their willingness to support this new venture into cybersecurity.
Michael Ienna Head of Computing Studies
“ CyberTaipan is based on a proven framework for educating and inspiring high school-aged students towards further education and careers in cyber security and other STEM subjects.”
