CENTRE WELLINGTON – “Falcontech Plagueware,” a team of computer technology students at Centre Wellington District High School (CWDHS) has won the Cyber Defender Award at the 2021 CyberTitan IV National Finals, a virtual cybersecurity competition.
This award, CWDH’s first ever CyberTitan national award, came along with the team’s top five finish overall at the competition, which took place May 17 to 19.
It goes to the team displaying the most innovation and teamwork in the competition.
The school’s other team in the competition, “Terabytches 3.0” also placed in the top 10.
The “Plagueware” team includes team members Tessa Routly (captain), Max King, Matteo Polak, Kohan Wesselink, Wesley Munn and Nick Robichaud.
Ian Thornton-Trump, the cybersecurity expert who is also the competition architect, described the team in a tweet as “an amazing group that made a really tough call to ‘nuke the machines from orbit’ to get rid of the malware in the last 10 minutes of the game. Well done #rockstars!”
Plagueware coach Tim King, a teacher at CWDHS, said the team had talked about how diverse and collaborative “Plagueware” is and how they won the Defender award based on their “audacious and out of the box” decision to “burn it all” rather than give up and take the points they had.
King said he was pleasantly surprised with the team’s award.
“We’ve been building toward this. We were up against giants,” he said.
“I couldn’t believe it. This really eclectic team came along. They were so audacious with how they attacked the competition. They did these completely out-of-the-box things the judges loved.”
Despite the surprise, King did have high expectations coming in. He said the team was full of students with a wide range of skill sets.
“We have a great diversity of thinkers on our team. There’s kids on this team that have done so many great things already,” he said.
King specifically pointed to Polak, who King said is very strong with coding, and team captain Routly, an “expert web developer.”
“Our senior players were two of the most experienced players we’ve ever brought to nationals,” he said.
“The team was kind of like the A-Team. Their skills certainly complemented each other.”
King plans to continue entering his students into CyberTitan competitions.
He hopes next year’s competition will be in-person, and he said there are plenty of Grade 9 and Grade 10 students interested in joining.
King said his competing students have always done a great job of passing down their experiences to the next generation of students. This year, it has been harder for them to do this, with the competition being fully virtual.
King said he has always tried to let his students take the lead.
“Really, this is all about students teaching students,” he said.
“My only real goal is to make the students feel like they belong.”
