About 200 middle and high school students from Florida’s 18th Congressional District vied for bragging rights as the region’s best cybersecurity team during Congressman Scott Franklin’s third annual Capture the Flag (CTF) Competition, held at Florida Polytechnic University on Tuesday, Oct. 21.
Armed with laptops, the teams of students tackled cybersecurity challenges to find hidden “flags” as quickly as possible. Members of Florida Poly’s Cybersecurity Club were on hand to provide support.
“This is a great opportunity for students to experience real-world scenarios and apply what they’ve learned in class,” said Yeymi Lopez, cybersecurity teacher at Okeechobee High School. “It opens doors and shows them how exciting and worthwhile it can be to have a career in this field.”
Nhat Phan, a junior at George Jenkins High School in Lakeland, was part of the four-member first-place team.
“This was very cool and it gave me a great new experience,” said Phan, who also participated in the 2024 event. “Cybersecurity interests me – it’s fun to do things like break passwords.”
As a member of the winning team, Phan received several prizes, including a $750 scholarship to attend Florida Poly if he is admitted and chooses to enroll. Scholarships of $500 and $250 went to the second- and third-place teams.
“When we think about cybersecurity, especially at this early age, we want students to embrace it because the future is changing,” said Dr. Andy Oguntola, assistant vice president of admissions at Florida Poly.
Franklin said his commitment to strengthening the pipeline of homegrown professionals in fast-growing fields like cybersecurity deepened when he joined Congress and saw both the rapid advances and workforce shortages in information security.
“One of our greatest challenges is finding the workforce that’s going to be able to do these fantastic jobs – we don’t have enough people to do them,” Franklin said. “We have this great university in Lakeland doing exactly the kind of work our government needs, and I want to make building that workforce a priority in our district. I want to expose our high school kids to this campus.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of information security analyst jobs will grow by 29% between 2024 and 2034 – a rate far exceeding the average 3% seen across all occupations.
Franklin’s CTF event was held in partnership with Cyber Florida and part of Cybersecurity Awareness Month activities across the state. Representatives from Cyber Florida, EC-Council, Sittadel, U.S. Special Operations Command and others met with participants to discuss career opportunities in the field.
“This event is so important because students not only apply what they are learning, but also meet industry professionals and explore career paths they might not have known about otherwise,” said Dr. Candi Rule, assistant director of cybersecurity education at Cyber Florida.
Contact:
Lydia Guzmán
Director of Communications
863-874-8557
