CyberPatriot Announces 2012 National Championship Winners

AFA proudly congratulates the winners of CyberPatriot IV, the nation’s largest and fastest growing high school cyber defense competition! 

On March 23, 2012, CyberPatriot IV concluded its National Finals Competition at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center.Out of the 402 Open Division teams that originally registered, “Team Unknown” of Alamo Academies, of San Antonio, Texas, was the first place winner, taking home the President’s Trophy As for the All Service Division, out of 617 original registrants, “Wolfpack” of the Civil Air Patrol’s Colorado Springs, Colorado Cadet Squadron took home first place and the Commander-in-Chief’s trophy. 

The following are all of the top winners for CyberPatriot IV:

Open Division: 
·  1^st place: Alamo Academies, San Antonio, Texas 
·  2^nd place: Lewis and Clark High School, Spokane, Washington 
·  3^rd place: Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, Rolling Hills Estates, California

All Service Division: 
·   1^st place: Colorado Springs Cadet Squadron, Civil Air Patrol, Colorado Springs, Colorado 
·   2^nd place: John R. Rogers High School, Air Force JROTC, Spokane, Washington 
·   3^rd place: Clearfield High School, Air Force JROTC, Clearfield, Utah 

The top three teams of each division were awarded during a banquet Friday evening and will collectively receive more than $50,000 in college scholarships from the Northrop Grumman Foundation, CyberPatriot’s presenting sponsor.

AFA Chairman of the Board Sandy Schlitt and Sandra Evers-Manly,
President of the Northrop Grumman Foundation,
with the college scholarships check awarded to top CyberPatriot IV winners.

"CyberPatriot has introduced the area of cyber defense to tens of thousands of students across the country, and they’ve embraced the opportunity to learn and develop the skills to be successful in a field critical to America,” said Bernie Skoch, CyberPatriot Commissioner. “All of the finalists of CyberPatriot IV have displayed a tremendous amount of effort over the past six months and proved that they were the nation’s most exceptionally talented students. We congratulate them all for being among the top 24 teams in the nation.”
 

CyberPatriot IV kicked off last October with more than 1,000 teams vying for a chance to compete among the top qualifying teams. All 50 states and U.S. Department of Defense Dependent Schools in Europe and the Pacific were represented in the two-track competition. Public, private, parochial and home schools registered in the Open Division, while Junior ROTC units of all Services and Civil Air Patrol squadrons filled the All Service Division. CyberPatriot IV also brought an international flavor to the competition with several teams from the Manitoba Province in Canada competing parallel to the American teams as the first international exhibition teams.

After three online preliminary rounds of hands-on cyber security, CyberPatriot finalists had an in-person challenge, competing face to face and defending virtual networks from a professional aggressor team. And new this year, the DoD Cyber Crime Center conducted the forensics portion of the competition, teaching and testing high school competitors on the exciting field of cyber forensics through the application of crime scene analysis, evidence gathering and critical thinking. 

Other CyberPatriot sponsors include founding partners SAIC and CIAS at the University of Texas-San Antonio, as well as AT&T, Boeing, General Dynamics, Microsoft, Raytheon, the Air Force Research Laboratory, MIT-Lincoln Laboratory, Cisco and URS.

Congratulations to all of the finalists! Registration for CyberPatriot V opens in April. More information is available at www.uscyberpatriot.org.