CyberSlam continues to grow thanks to successful event

On Friday, October 11, students from across Colorado attended CyberSlam hosted by FutureForward at Bollman. CyberSlam is an event held during National Cybersecurity Awareness Month that allows students to learn about  career opportunities in the cybersecurity field through a variety of hands-on workshops. These workshops are hosted by cybersecurity experts at the post-secondary level and from industry.

This year students had the opportunity to learn about the Enigma machine used to encode war time communications during World War II. They even got to touch an authentic Enigma machine. Students had an opportunity to learn how to build patch cables for a computer network. They learned adversarial thinking skills through developing attack trees for the following scenarios: The cookie heist; The prom decoration sabotage, and more. Students learned about defense in depth through playing the Cyber Threat Defender's Card game. They also had the opportunity to see what information can be gleaned from Meta data and how ransomware works using a Cyber Range.

In addition to attending hands-on workshops, students had the opportunity to network with industry and CAE (Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity) Accredited post-secondary institutions. Industry participation included: Adams 12 IT, B.A.E. Systems, Capital One, Career wise, City of Westminster, CrowdStrike, Cyber.org, IntePros, Lockheed Martin, Pagoda, Palo Alto Networks, Sentinel Technologies, Teach Cyber, Walmart, Xcel Energy, and more. Post-secondary institutions included: Colorado Mesa University, Red Rocks Community College, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, and University of Denver. Industry members also spoke to the students during a career panel, sharing about their pathway into cybersecurity and advice they wished that someone had shared with them. During the career panel students also learned about what it looks like day-today in cybersecurity for the different types of industries and which companies offer internships and when they need to apply for those internships.

This is the 3rd year CyberSlam has run. It began 2 years ago at FutureForward at Bollman. During the first two years, the event was held on a non-school day at the Bollman Campus. The 1st year the event ran students attended 4 workshops: Threat Hunting (Cisco); Enigma Machine; CES Demonstration (Sierra Nevada Corporation); and Cyber Thread Defenders (Adams 12 IT) and a Career Panel. Year one included speakers from: Sierra Nevada Corporation, Adams 12 IT, Cisco, Regis University, UCCS, United States Air Force Academy, Palo Alto Networks, Xcel Energy, Capital One, and Addi. Based on feedback from the students we modified the event in year two to include a networking session with industry and post-secondary. The event grew in year two to include the following industry and post-secondary partners: Cyber.org, Teach Cyber, Lockheed Martin, Cisco, Pagoda, Adams 12 IT, Capital One, USAFA, Align Cybersecurity, UCCS, IntePros, Walmart, Palo Alto Networks, Addi, CSU, Red Rocks Community College, Colorado School of Mines, and CU Boulder. This year, the event was held on a school day at the Adams 12 Five Star Schools Training Center. Thanks to the Five-Star Foundation, we have been able to provide lunch to the students at this event all three years! :) Both last year and this year the ProStart students catered the event.

This event was designed for students to learn about how to enter the cybersecurity pathway! They often don't see anyone during college and career fairs that can help them navigate this pathway. If you don't know what your options are, how can you get there? This event helps connect students with both industry and post-secondary in the cybersecurity pathway.

Special thanks to the FutureForward at Bollman community for submitting this Five Star Story.

This story exemplifies our ELEVATE Focus Area: Diverse Learning. Sharing stories of how students receive engaging learning experiences and the focused-attention they need through appropriate student-to-staff ratios and varied programming.