THS student takes cyber prize

By Bart Moss For the FCT

Annslee Bottoms, a sophomore at Tharptown High School, was selected for the Right Stuff Award and first place in Cyberpatriot Competition at the Huntsville Space & Rocket Center’s first Cyber Camp.

Cyber Camp is a program being developed through a partnership of Cyber Huntsville, The University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The Cyber Camp curriculum combined aspects of CyberPatriot curriculum with courses developed by UAH and supplemented with activities at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

Trainees learned about cyber ethics, file protections and cryptography. The training is highlighted by multiple demonstrations and hands-on application labs in which trainees put their newly-learned skills to the test.

“It was a great honor,” said Bottoms, who said she hopes to pursue a career in healthcare or computer technology. “We got to program a computer, learn about different operating systems, learn how to prevent someone from hacking our phones or computers and many other aspects of cyber security.”

Bottoms said they also got to see how a hacker would attack a computer with denial of service attacks. They also learned some basic coding and virtual machines.

“I did learn that it is very important for people, myself included, to be more aware of how we protect our information in this digital world,” said Bottoms. “We are all at risk from hackers, and the first thing we can do is protect our own information.”