Among the many extracurricular opportunities that ETHS has to offer comes a new way to get involved in the digital world: Cybersecurity Club.

The club was originated by juniors Leif Ye and AJ Bakari, with teacher sponsor Gary Haller, who teaches Programming and Web Design.

“I’ve been really interested [in cybersecurity] since eighth grade,” said Ye. “But…summer going into sophomore year [is] when I really started taking it seriously.”

The club, which is currently in the planning process, will mostly involve teaching people cybersecurity skills, which is the practice of protecting digital systems and sensitive information from digital attacks. And with the rapid increase of readily available technology such as smartphones and computers, cybersecurity is more relevant than ever.

“Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important by the day,” said Ye. “If you read the news, you’ll see there’s a ton of cyber breaches, over 2,000 a day. So I think it’s just important to teach.” 

But while the Cybersecurity Club is mainly practice-based, it will also be providing an element of competition by participating in picoCTF. PicoCTF is an annual cybersecurity hacking competition for middle and high school students and is the largest of its kind.

“PicoCTF is like the cybersecurity olympics,” said Ye.

The Cybersecurity Club is currently in its beginning stages, with the first meeting being after school on April 21 in A335. Ye says that the logistics will be ironed out in the coming days. 

“I haven’t…really participated in a club before, so I just kind of want to see how it goes. I want to test out a week, see ‘does this teaching method work?’ because I’ve never been a teacher either,” said Ye.

The Cybersecurity Club has a teacher sponsor and a room dedicated for meetings, and with a handful of people already willing to join, there’s no doubt it will quickly gain many regular members.

“[Cybersecurity] is a growing field. There’s a talent shortage, so if people want to get into it, now is the time,” said Ye. “It’s only going up.”

Contributor: Tarek Anthony