Students from Georgia and South Carolina are spending this week learning from the experts about all things cyber.
One of three scheduled CyberPatriot Camp 2023 sessions kicked off Monday at the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta and Aiken Technical College. The middle and high school students come from the seven-county Augusta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).
Dr. Tom Clark of the Alliance for Fort Gordon, which is one of the coordinators, says students apply to participate in the camp. They receive about 100 applications and choose students to participate.
“Cyber is in everything now,” he said. “It’s in medical, it’s in the engineering of cars, it’s in just protecting your home network.”
15-year-old Calia Edmondson of Columbia County, who is home-schooled, said cyber education is a family affair.
“My dad works at Augusta Tech, so he’s been introducing me to cyber and I really like computers,” she explained. “This helps me learn if I have a big enough interest in cyber to have a job. Or, because this is such a diverse camp, I might find I like a certain section of cyber better than another.”
14-year-old Sport Nelson of Richmond County attended through his participation in the Boys and Girls Club, but he is also learning some of it at school.
“That’s actually one of the things that caused me to look further into cybersecurity,” he said. “I go to A.R. Johnson, and it has a program for teaching us different types of coding.”
Clark said the camps teach introduction to cyber ethics, cybersecurity, Linux, and Windows, but it is done in an engaging environment.
“They do games, they do Jeopardy. They’ll do all of this in the four days of training, Monday through Thursday,” he said. “Then Friday, they’ll have a live competition where all their skills will come together. And they will game it out to successfully build and defend the little business that they’ve developed.”
Specialist, Casey O’Reilly, with the U.S. Army Cyber School at Fort Gordon, was asked to participate in the camps as an instructor.
“I jumped at the opportunity,” he said. “Happy to see young people taking an interest in cyber. I think it’s important for them to have at least basic cyber literacy. We talk a lot about financial literacy, civic literacy, but given the prevalence of cyber in today’s world it is of the utmost importance, in my opinion.”
Clark said the recent hack of the Augusta-Richmond County’s computer system points to the need for trained professionals who can protect their networks. These camps will introduce the students to the first steps they can take to become that IT professionals.
“At the very basic level, they understand phishing, they understand ransomware, things like that,” he said. “So, it’s imperative that they learn that early on and also how to establish their online profiles, because those types of profiles are permanent and alive.”
Clark said a camp like this, one that engages students still in middle and high school, is a grassroots effort to train them for jobs. He said there are thousands of shortages of skilled cyber professionals in this area alone.
