The Advanced Technology department is proud to host our 7th CyberPatriot Camp here at the main campus of IRSC. This year’s group of young ethical hackers come the state of Florida’s Civil Air Patrol program. These motivated young men and women traveled from across the state to attend the week-long camp.

On Monday we gave them a tour of all our programs in Advanced Technology. Students got up close and hands-on with robotics, starred in their own video in our state-of-the-art TV studio, setup laser arrays to safeguard a precious artifact in our lasers and photonics room, and capped off the day by experiencing our brand new Virtual Reality room! In between demonstrations, we also took the time to introduce students to our Nuclear flow loop, our nanolab (where they all marveled at our drone projects), and our fabrication lab – where they got to model an object in 3D, and then learn how to fabricate it!

On Tuesday we got right into the course, with modules on Cyber Ethics. In the afternoon, we introduced students to the Cisco NetAcad online course, and game them an intense learning session on various aspects of networking and Cisco equipment.

For Wednesday’s camp, we tore into the Windows operating system. Students learned how to completely harden the OS to minimize the chance of a malicious attack.

On Thursday we did the same thing for the Ubuntu Linux OS. This proved quite a challenge, as most students had not experienced Linux before. Luckily, the similarities between the Command Prompt and Terminal provided them with the familiarity they needed.

On Friday we had a team based competition scored using the USAF’s CyberPatriot attack images of both operating systems. The team that scored the highest, as well as the individual who improved the most during the camp, both received special awards and a gift. Everyone involved received certificates of participation. It was another excellent event hosted by Dr. Kevin Cooper and his staff at the Advanced Technology department.