Marshall Academy, GMU Host Cybersecurity Conference for Students of All Ages

From Fairfax County Public Schools:

FAIRFAX COUNTY - In recognition of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Marshall Academy—a Governor’s STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) Academy—and George Mason University (GMU) will host the first Cybersecurity Youth Conference on Saturday, October 29, at GMU’s Fairfax campus. The conference is designed to expose elementary, middle, and high school students and their parents to cybersecurity fundamentals. The event is sponsored by Northrop Grumman, IBM, Booz Allen, Symantec, and the University of Virginia (U.Va.).

Check in begins at 9:30 a.m. and the conference will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Included will be keynote speakers, breakout sessions, an exhibit hall, and hands-on activities.

The event will feature keynote speakers Ruthe Farmer, director of strategic initiatives, National Center for Women and Information Technology, who focuses her efforts on increasing girls’ participation in technology and engineering, and Virginia Secretary of Education Dietra Trent.

Breakout sessions and their sponsors include:

• “That wasn’t what I meant to delete…”, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• “Internet of Me,” IBM
• “An Introduction to IoT (Internet of Things) through Home Automation,” Cisco.
• “Incident Response and MalwareTriage,”FireEye.
• “Security and Privacy Issues in UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle),” Volgenau School of Engineering, GMU.
• “Capture the Flag,” Carnegie Mellon University.
• “Software Defined Radios in a Vehicular Applications,” Volgenau School of Engineering, GMU.
• “Cybersecurity in an IoT World,” Virginia Tech Hume Center for National Security and Technology.
• “Career Steps – Using Social Media to your Advantage,” George Washington University.
• “Fingerprints,” “Facial Recognition,” and “Who Stole the Lunch? DNA in Forensic Science,” College of Science, GMU.
• “How to Tell if Your Kid is a Black Hat (Hacker),” Marymount University.
• “Digital Citizenship and Internet Safety,” The Source of Learning.
• “Learn to Code with Jetpack Jumper,” Microsoft.

Participants can register online. Follow us on Twitter at #cyberforceva and on Facebook @VolgenauSTEM.

For details and registration information, contact Kammy Sanghera, executive director of STEM Outreach, Volgenau School of Engineering, at 703-362-2474 or ksangher@gmu.edu, or Shelli Farquharson, career experience specialist at Marshall Academy, at 703-714-5581 or smfarquharso@fcps.edu.

Image via Shutterstock.