MARQUETTE, Mich. (WLUC) – Twenty high school students spent the week at Northern Michigan University learning about the basics of cybersecurity.
It’s called the Cyber Defenders Summer Camp. The campers learned about everything from ethical hacking, to SQL attacks, to Python, which is like a language for computers. Certain websites and apps are controlled by Python.
Ian McGuire and Eric Sanders, with help from Daniel Murphy, gave a presentation about Python.
“My presentation was about making Snake in Python and how that applied to cybersecurity,” said Sanders, an incoming high school junior from Livonia. “I’ve always been into computers. I’ve always wanted to just learn more about them, and I wanted to go into, well not cybersecurity specifically, but just something with computers and coding.”
The camp has been going on for the last five years. Director of the U.P. Cybersecurity Institute at NMU and Camp Director Michael Sauer says the goal is to take them from zero to hero. He also says there’s a critical need for workers in this field.
“One of the strategies is through grant opportunities to really engage with high school students earlier,” Sauer said. “The main goal of that camp is for career exploration but also teaching the technical skills.”
Friday morning, the campers gave presentations to NMU faculty, family and friends in the Science Building. Sauer says it was good real-world experience for the campers.
“They were presented challenges that had to do with what they were instructed on and those were guided by the students with a little bit of instructor input if they got stuck,” Sauer said. “But really working as a team, teaching that team collaboration.”
The campers were able to find solutions to their problems. Just one small step into their futures as cybersecurity professionals.
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