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Robeson Students Enjoy Week-Long Cybersecurity Camp

Robeson Community College in North Carolina hosted middle and high school students last week in a camp that challenged them to correct security issues and change passwords and policies on user accounts.

Robeson Community College.jpg
Credit: Robeson Community College Facebook page
(TNS) — Malware. Hacking. Phishing.

Those were just some of the topics that campers recently learned during a week-long cybersecurity camp held at Robeson Community College. Students from across the county and the surrounding areas took part in exploring the world of computers, the Internet, and cybersecurity.

The camp ended with a competition on Friday. It was the middle schoolers vs. the high schoolers.

"The middle schoolers won," said Michael Jacobs, an instructor for the Business Technologies program at RCC.

During the competition, both teams had to correct security issues that were present in images.

"They had to correct the security issues and flaws inside the images and fix those in both," said Jacobs. "There were security tools that were turned off from the defaults and the campers had to go inside and enable the settings to be turned on."

Campers also got to experience what it was like to change passwords and policies (a set of rules based on the organization) on user accounts.

"The policies are enabled to meet the needs of the organization," said Jacobs.

"It was a very enjoyable experience," said Jacobs. "I started off with the idea of teaching cybersecurity features to the students, but in return I got a greater appreciation of the team effort of us working together as a team."

"The students seemed to really enjoy their time here and we look forward to the one next year," said Jacobs.

The camp was provided in partnership with the Air Force Association (AFA) and the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS) and is made possible through the RCC CyberConnect Grant funded by the National Science Foundation — Advanced Technological Education (NSF-ATE) Grant #2100012. The grant is spearheaded by the CyberConnect Team — Michael Jacobs; Loretta Allen, a business technologies instructor at RCC, and Lisa Steffs, the coordinator of the grant.

The college would like to thank the teachers who assisted with the camp from the Public Schools of Robeson County, as well as the student workers who helped make the Cybersecurity Camp possible.

©2022 The Robesonian (Lumberton, N.C.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.