Cyber Discovery Spotlight: Luke Shields
Before Cyber Discovery, I was talented in IT and Computer Science but had no experience in cyber security whatsoever. Since the age of 12, I have had the ambition to pass my GCSE’s and go on to college and do a degree in cyber security. With this in mind, Cyber Discovery was an opportunity to get in some practice and start building my knowledge.
I was introduced to the programme near the end of CyberStart Assess by a friend, who thought that I would enjoy it. He was also taking part, so we thought we would make it competitive and see who went the furthest in the competition. The heat was rising as we were trying to get top spot.
CyberStart Assess had 13 levels to solve with one bonus level for the people who completed all 13 rounds. I enjoyed the test of problem solving. I didn’t get to finish Assess because I didn’t have time to get to the end but I did enough to get an invitation to CyberStart Game.
CyberStart Game was the next stage of the programme, with an amazing 196 challenges to complete. Game was split up into 2 sections — “Moon base” which was all about programming skills and “HQ” which was facing real-life situations and trying to solve them. They all started easy and got progressively harder as you moved up levels.
I loved “HQ” because this part of CyberStart Game helped me discover things that I had never learnt before like SQL injection, Command Injection, Zip password cracking, Konami Code and lots more.
“Moon base” presented a whole different set of programming challenges to solve using python 2.
Then it was on to CyberStart Essentials. Essentials was set around 50 examined modules which helped expand my knowledge way beyond what you would be taught in a classroom.
The CyberStart Essentials topics taught me so much more than I thought I could learn. Probably the most useful thing I discovered was Linux — this was a topic that I knew a bit about but CyberStart Essentials went into more depth and taught me new things in a way I understood.
In the future, cyber security will have importance in everyone’s life. Cyber criminals will continue to find better ways round systems and cyber security analysts will be needed to stop them. Understanding how computers work safely and securely is a major skill everyone should learn.
My highlight in the whole program was finishing Game at 75% and essentials at 80% and getting an invite to the Elite Beta Network. I definitely will be applying to year 2 of this program as I have obtained a huge amount of knowledge from this year.
Luke Shields, 17
If you are interested in taking part in our Cyber Discovery Spotlight series, please get in touch. We would love to hear about your experience as a student, club leader or school taking part in the programme!
