One hundred and seven teams consisting of three high school students each competed in the seventh annual Missouri High School Cybersecurity Challenge. The challenge began with a virtual round in January, where the top 10 teams based on scores competed at an in-person event in Columbia for top honors.
Missouri Military Academy won the event, with students from Pattonville in St. Ann Missouri placing both second and third. Students solved real-world cybersecurity challenges in a safe, controlled virtual environment. According to Dr. Charles Gardner, Director of the Heartland Cyber Range with Enterprise KC, the entity providing the technology for the event, “It’s important that students practice with real world tools. The key to preventing cyber attacks is knowing who they (the hackers and threat actors) are, where they are from and what they are capable of.”
Those real-world tools include decryption of encoded text, breaking passwords in Kali Linux and exploiting network devices using Ubuntu Linux and Windows 11. To excel at this competition, students also had to research open-source intelligence (OSINT). Dr. Gardner added, “Learning how to research is a critical component in protecting our cyber environments.”
The Cybersecurity Challenge was funded in part by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Michael Corcoran, Assistant Director of Computer Science, Business, Marketing & Information Technology in the Office of College and Career Readiness at DESE said it was important to help facilitate events like this, “Allowing students to engage in new activities they haven’t experienced yet could spur interest in these growing career opportunities.” He added that “This event is teaching workforce-ready skills that these students can take directly into the future.”
The annual Missouri High School Cybersecurity Challenge is hosted by the Missouri Research and Education Network (MOREnet), a member-driven consortium serving and connecting Missouri’s community anchor institutions as a trusted technology partner. Natasha Angell, Executive Director of MOREnet shares the importance of this event. “Here in Missouri and across the nation, we continue to see increases in cybersecurity career opportunities across education, healthcare, finance and the technology sector.” In addition to addressing the growing demand for the profession, MOREnet is committed to providing this opportunity to schools. “We are proud to realize increased participation in this event year after year as we host this rich learning experience for students that mirrors real-world obstacles cybersecurity professionals face every day.”
Students of the winning team are Lian Haddad, Alex Jones and John Shadonix, coached by Jason Landrum. When speaking with all the participants after the event, one of the participating students, Eric Shellabarger, a junior who was on the Missouri Military Academy team placing fourth, said he participated last year. The experience was valuable enough that Missouri Military Academy had five teams compete this year. All five teams placed in the top twenty, with two making it to finals. He remarked, “Other competitions we’ve done were more online fill in the blank, this one was both physical and digital. To be successful in cybersecurity, we need to know how to navigate the Kali Linux environment. That challenge opened our eyes.”
Both the second and third place teams were from Pattonville High School in St. Ann Missouri. Students placing second were Daniel Clifford, Lucas Konopka and Nicholas Shao. The third place team consisted of Lydia Greenwalt Hamil, Harrison Lee and Xander Willingham. Both teams were coached by Stephanie Carson.
Other finalists competing in Tuesday’s event included a third team from Pattonville, Summit Technology Academy (three teams in the finals), Missouri Military Academy (two total teams in the finals), Timberland High School and Willow Springs High School.
