Two Chantilly Academy students, Anirudh Badge and Weyland Chiang, placed 2nd and 10th in last weekend’s Gov. Robert McDonnell's First Annual Governor's Cyber Challenge at George Mason University.
Anirudh, who placed 2nd in the state, was awarded a $3,500 scholarship.
The challenge invited all high school students in the Commonwealth to participate in a series of online cyber quizzes, with the top 40 students being asked to participate in a live championship competition at George Mason University in order to compete for $10,000 in scholarships. The program featured 110 schools, from throughout the Commonwealth, who registered 733 students for the challenge.
The challenge was a partnership with the Cyber Aces Foundation, and the U.S. Cyber Challenge and was sponsored by the SANS Institute.
The Cyber Aces foundation is a 501 (c) 3 organization founded to help people discover and pursue cyber security education and careers.
The SANS Institute is the principal cyber security training institute for the U.S. military and intelligence agencies as well as for power companies, banks, law enforcement and other civilian government agencies. More than 147,000 SANS alumni lead and serve on both offensive and defensive cyber teams and SANS cyber simulators are used to assess and develop advanced technical skills.