The cyber-enthusiasts who attended were (from left to right) Year 12 students Rhylei Tremlett, Matthew Suter and Ruben Castaing along with year 9 student Will Irvine.

Photo by Eddie Pattillo - Teacher of Digital Technology

Digital Technology students hold their own in industry competition

Nayland College — August 17th, 2018

During the last term break, a group Digital Technology students from Nayland College attended University of Waikato's fifth annual Cyber Security Competition in Hamilton.

Invitations to the conference and a travel subsidy of $250 from Google were given to the top 150 out of over 400 competitors in a qualifying round of hacking challenges designed to test their ability to exploit vulnerabilities in a purposefully designed environment.

"These competitions are designed to teach digital security by training participants to think like a malicious hacker so that they can be preempted",

says Nayland's Digital Tech teacher Edward Pattillo who took students to the event.

Representatives from the NZ Police, several banks, research groups and government bodies were there to present to the attendees and recruit potential employers.

The contest was open to all ages and, although Nayland teams didn't win any major prizes this year, one of our teams managed to win an individual challenge.

"This was our first year to attend the conference/competition and, judging by student enthusiasm, next year should be even better", remarked Edward Pattillo.

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