Repeated success for Manx teams in second round of national CyberSecurity competition
This weekend, the second round of CyberCenturion IX, a national cyber education initiative for 12–18-year-olds, designed to excite, educate, and motivate students to pursue further education and careers in STEM and cybersecurity, was hosted at Code Club. Each round contains a range of cyber challenges across the breadth of cybersecurity, such as audits and policies, for the teams to solve.
In its eight year of participating, Code Club has the strongest cohort of teams it has ever presented, currently hosting the top team overall, the top junior boys team and one of the top girls teams, out of 264 teams that took part across both this round and the previous round in October.
Across the senior and junior division in one of three categories (all boys, all girls or mixed), seven teams of local students took part in this round. As the second round of three, the difficulty of this round increased exponentially compared to the first round. However, this did not stop the Code Club teams pushing for scores higher than ever earned on the Isle of Man before.
The club’s teams enjoyed further successes, with ‘CyberAces’, a senior boys team defending the top spot overall on the leaderboard (following on from first overall in Round 1). ‘I Am Root’, one of three Junior Boys teams at the club, came out in top of their category, narrowly missing out on top Junior team by three points. ‘Cyber Dragons’, the all-girls team at Code Club, came second in the all-girls category, only four points away from first place.
Overall, from rounds 1 and 2 combined, the club is hitting top scores across the board, with ‘CyberAces’ earning first overall, ‘I Am Root’ first out of the junior division, and ‘Cyber Dragons’ first out of the all-girls category.
Adam Drummond, team leader at Code Club, said “I am chuffed with the results from all the teams this round. The determination and motivation shown throughout the entire six hours of the competition shows how important this competition is to not only the club, but also to the individual competitors.”
“The atmosphere in the final 30 minutes of the competition window was electric”, he exclaimed. “The drive from the teams to push just a little bit further and get even two or three extra points was fantastic to see; especially with a difference of just three points between our second and third-placed teams at the end.
Each week, the club holds sessions focussed not just on cybersecurity, but across a range of other STEM topics. For more information regarding CyberCenturion, or anything else that Code Club does, contact hello@codeclub.im, visit their Facebook page (Isle of Man Code Club) or drop-in to any of their Saturday sessions at Barclays Eagle Lab in Douglas, from 4-6pm.
Further information:
CyberCenturion is a cyber defence competition. It was established by the Air Force Association. The Northrop Grumman Foundation is the Presenting Sponsor for CyberCenturion.
https://www.stem.org.uk/cyber-centurion
L-R Gabriel Todorov, Tyler Sharples, Alexander Owenson, Brodie Millar, Liam Carey, Flynt Owens, Cameron Bazley, Regan Williams, Sam Cooke, Aaron Rielly, Ruadhan Milsom, Siddharth Shakthivel Muthu Pandian, Elliot Hildestam-Rice, Luka Warren, Lenny Saunders, Jiayue Kang, Era Clements, Aristea Owenson, Arwen Hoile
L-R Siddharth Shakthivel Muthu-Pandian, Aaron Rielly, Luka Warren, Arthur Owenson
