SAN ANTONIO – In this week’s TECH SA, KSAT 12 News visited a cybersecurity camp that is inspiring local kids through innovative hands-on projects and challenges.
The next generation of cybersecurity professionals is attending a camp at the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology’s Area 21, located inside the Boeing Center at Tech Port on 3331 General Hudnell Drive.
“It’s a great opportunity for students because they do receive real-world, hands-on training and here at SAMSAT they are able to familiarize themselves with a security operation center environment,” said Alyssa Felan, a STEM educator at SAMSAT.
Sydney Primm, a Brandeis High School student and National Society of Black Engineers Jr. member, is participating this summer.
“We’ve learned about cybersecurity and how it works. We’ve learned the different operating systems and we’ve learned about online safety, which is very important for our generation today,” Primm said.
About 20 students in middle and high school are participating in the Air Force Association Cyber Patriot Camp.
“The skills that they learn here are foundational. They can carry these skills through middle school, high school, collegiate career. If they join the service to do cyber, they can take these skills and advance themselves further and further they go in their career,” said Frank Hall, the director of Cyber Texas Foundation Educational Outreach.
Different industry leaders in the field of cybersecurity visited the camp, including various airmen from the 16th Air Force.
“A lot of these children have a big passion for wanting to learn more and explore the great and immense world of cybersecurity, and being able to kind of help them with that and share those experiences and knowledge with them really helps kind of like expand their horizons of what is possible for them,” said Capt. Brandon Webster, cyberspace operations planner.
Webster says there are many paths and jobs in cybersecurity for students.
“We have things like if you want to become a hacker or penetration tester, a more official term, or if you wanted to become a cybersecurity individual like myself, doing things like incident response or just being somebody that is able to do forensics on computers and helping criminal investigations. There are tons of opportunities out there for those kids to be able to explore your options and be able to find a niche that really kind of fits what they want to do,” Webster said.