 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Young Talent's Making Way here on Think Tech Hawaii. We're live. This is our first show, and I'm Andrea Gabrieli. I'm your host for this show. I am a friend with Think Tech Hawaii and also assistant researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at UH Manoa. And today, we're going to talk about something particularly exciting. We're going to talk about cyber security and the cyber-patriot program at Sacred Hearts Academy. And please welcome Ayanna Arnabit to our show. Hello, Ayanna. Welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to have you here. Nice to meet you. Thank you. I'm happy to be here, too. Thank you. So you are a student at Sacred Hearts Academy. Yeah, I am. I'm a junior at Sacred Hearts Academy. Okay. And so today, we're going to talk about cyber security. So what kind of programs do they have over there for this particular topic? At Sacred Hearts Academy, we have the cyber-patriot program where students are given real-world scenarios and situations that simulate attackers hacking into a computer or we're just in charge of protecting a computer system. Wow, that sounds pretty advanced. So you want to tell us more about this program and why you joined it and what are you passionate about it? I really enjoy the cyber-patriot program because it allows me to learn new concepts that I can apply in my everyday life because everyone uses a computer or some sort of tech device that we have to keep secure and protect attackers from getting our personal information. I was initially drawn to it just because it seemed so interesting and it didn't seem like the stereotypical club. It seemed very new and original. I will speak so. Yeah. And just the program in Sacred Hearts, we have a very strong, we have a lot of mentors coming in to help and support the new members. So I provide opportunities for people who aren't too familiar with computers to people who are really advanced in computers just because there's so much support with the program and the mentors we have. Oh, this is very good. So people can really understand from all different levels of that. So I understand that basically cyber security is getting basically trying to get the internet secure for all the people. I guess it's like a house. The internet can be compared to a house which everybody has the keys to. So we want to enter the house because there's sort of very good information in there, but we need to get some precautions. Yeah. So can you tell us more about what cyber security is and so how we can get safe with this so particular thing which is the internet? Cyber security is just basically protecting us and our personal information that we hold on our computer like passwords or personal data like our birthday and other information and hackers, they can attack it through some popular things such as phishing, which is where, not hackers, but cyber criminals, they send an email pretending to be a large company like Amazon and they will send you a link like, oh, click on this link and then you can put in your email and password to log into your Amazon account, but it's not actually the real Amazon website so that they can get your information that way. So this is how they get the information and everything. So how do you, basically you said they pretend to be some large company or something, but so how do you distinguish the actual legitimate large company from these hackers? Typically in emails such as those, Amazon, for example, they would never send, oh, click on this link to log into your account and if you were to log into your account you would have to do it manually through logging in through the URL address at the top of the browser to avoid getting attacked. And usually those emails have spelling errors or grammar errors to look out for. Oh, okay. This is good to listen. This is good to know for our viewers as well. Yeah. So it sounds like this is a really good program at Sacred Hearts Academy to get involved in and to learn more about security and the internet. What other activities and classes do you do there? In Sacred Hearts we have the Digital Engineering class, which is, it ties in the CyberPatriot class, but they give overview to during the school day for students who aren't able to attend after school because their meetings are once a week for two hours after school, which is quite a bit of amount of time. And then additionally there's some other competitions held throughout the year for beginners or experts. There's actually one coming up right now. Oh, yeah. So are you part of the competition? Are you part of the team? Yes, I, yeah. And so how long have you been involved basically with Cybersecurity and the CyberPatriot program? I've been involved with CyberPatriot for this is my third year. I'm the team captain for my own individual CyberPatriot team during our competition. And during those competitions I'm in charge of overseeing the team, making sure that we're all on task, helping if there's any small issues within each of the my teammates' competition requirements. And I'm in charge of securing a Linux operating system, which is similar to a Mac. Oh, so you operate with Linux. Yeah. Okay, okay. And so are these, just to, you know, understand more, these competitions are, you know, in the schools or you have different groups within Sacred Hearts Academy or it's open to various schools and different schools that, so you have more participants from the state or on the island? They're, it's open to everyone in the nation, I believe. And I think, I think there's some in other countries too, I believe that Canada and perhaps the Middle East, I'm not too sure on that one, have the same CyberPatriot program. And within our CyberPatriot program, we have different divisions we compete in. So we compete against people in our JROTC, military affiliated clubs, and then people like me who aren't in those clubs and just do it for leisure or as a hobby. And then within those, we compete on the state round. And then once past the state competition, we go into the nationals round where we compete with everyone in the state, I mean in the nation, I bet. Wow. Yeah. This is very exciting. And what's, what's basically, what do you do to win? Because that's the... It's a pretty intense competition. We spend several months preparing. Just to prepare and get ready for it. Yeah. Because we have so many tasks to do during the competition. For example, we get these files which are like, oh, this user has an MP3 file on their computer they're not supposed to have. Please show us where it's found on the computer and copy and paste the location into this text file. And we would get points for that. And we would get all points for other things such as enabling a firewall or changing administrator policies to prevent hackers from, well, cyber criminals from doing wrong things on the computer. So what's for our viewers and everything, can you tell us what is a firewall and how we can really... Okay. Yeah. Firewalls are basically these sort of programs on your computer that prevent outside contact coming in. So you can have different settings on the firewall. You can have outgoing connections, which you want so that you can connect to the internet. But you want to have incoming connections blocked to prevent any sort of outside contact from reaching your computer and implanting something in it. And so basically, do you also make these firewalls programs yourselves or you use something else? We just use the ones free online, but sometimes we have to configure the ones pre-built in on the computer for like, oh, we need to enable this sort of program to be used. We have to go to the firewall settings and like, oh, make sure that this program allows... Change the settings and so manage with the program and everything. And so what's something that... So we need to picture, you know, these competitions and everything. So you basically, how does it actually work? You go to a place or it's done on the internet with all the people, because I assume since there are people from all over the nations, I would assume, yeah, you go basically on the internet. But how does it actually work? Tell us more. We're curious. Well, the competition, we have three days to compete. We don't have to compete for all three days. Oh, okay. But we're given a six hour time slot to work in. We can't work beyond that six hours or we can't work. We have a time limit for that. And we can't work like two hours on Friday, two hours on Saturday, two hours on Sunday. It has to be six hours of one sitting to dedicate to securing a computer. And during those six hours, where we aren't allowed to contact people outside of the outside of the competition, like we can't call our family and friends and ask them, oh, hey, do you know how to do this? They could love cheating. I don't know if they would be able to. Yeah. Okay, this is so it's a team, basically. Yeah, team effort. Yeah. I think in the picture that just showed up with me and the groups surrounding me on a show some pictures. Yeah, this picture with me, I'm on the right. Yeah, and the people surrounding me on our computer. That's our team, basically on our computers trying to secure it with the different types of operating systems. So on the left, we have the Linux and on the right, we have the windows. Also, you operate with different operating systems as well. Yeah. Okay. So you have more, you bring more pictures? Yeah, this is, let's see, let's see. This is another picture. This is a picture of me educating the elementary students in our school. We don't, we reach out to the children, well, the grades younger than us to help them start on the fundamentals and understand what it what you should secure on a computer. When you're when you first start out because kids these days are starting to use computers younger and a younger age. No, this is very good to know. I mean, it's very good that you have this program at Sacred Heights Academy. And so it sounds like a very good program. Yeah. So so basically, this program, you teach the younger the elementary students, the elementary school students how to do this, you know, how to secure a computer, you take parts in competitions, you lead this this this groups at Sacred Heights Academy. What are some some some some stories? What are some, you know, funny things that happened during these, you know, as you teach the younger students or as you participate in these competitions? What really happens? Um, when we were teaching the young elementary students at one time, we were playing a game. And we were to teach them about computer viruses and how to attack them, or to familiarize themselves with Oh, computer viruses are bad, we shouldn't have them on our computer. So it's kind of like a point and shoot game where we had a spaceship that shot bullets out to the viruses. This doesn't actually happen on the computer, but it's a fun way for them to learn how to that viruses are bad. So we had five, we had only five laptops in a class of 20 kids. So five kids would be huddled around a laptop, and one of them would be controlling the left arrow, one would be controlling the right, and they'd all work together. And it was really cute to watch. So how often do you do these? And because I would assume, you know, at Sacred Heights Academy, you are also busy studying, you know, other disciplines and everything. How often do you do these competitions and teaching to the younger students? For the competitions, we just finished our last competition last week. We are awaiting our results. They haven't come in yet. And the competition season lasts for about the first semester of school. And the second semester, we dedicate that time to reaching out to different age groups, teaching them about cyber security, and also preparing for the next season. And during the summer, too, we have, there was a statewide cyber camp within different schools. We hosted one as well. We would teach middle school to high school age students on how to secure a computer. Wow. Oh, this is this is really impressive, you know, that good, perfect. So what are you, what are your, you know, we said that you are involved with this cyber patriot program that you know, you teach to younger students. What else basically you're doing at the Sacred Hearts Academy? What are the what are the what are you studying? What are you? Currently, I'm taking four AP classes right now. And on it, in addition to that, I'm taking five other clubs aside from cyber patriot. So it's a very full load I have to handle. But these are all regarding informatics and cyber security or it's more other I'd say it's more STEM in general, because cyber patriot, I think is our only really cyber security focused club at school. But all the other STEM clubs that we have really complement the different aspects of cyber patriot, like Girls Who Code, we learn about the different programming languages that we can use to apply in the cyber patriot program. In the math team, we just we it's solving math problems, but the logical process of solving problems can be applied to the finding what's wrong with your computer. And we have the robotics program, which is not to some I'd say the least similar to cyber patriot, but it just provides a really good experience of teamwork and reaching out to people aside from the competition sphere. And as we all know, this is very, very important reaching out and and really show the importance of what we're doing. So let me ask you. Let me ask you one more question about this cyber security. You know, when we basically viruses are programs that are sent to computers to do certain things. And so how besides I guess having a good antivirus is an everything. How do we really protect our computers? Because this is really something that our viewers as well are curious to see, you know, to get to know more about this topic. I think the basics are, well, the most important thing is to know to protect your personal information and what personal information is, because that can be taken from a number of ways, like having a conversation with somebody can actually take your personal information away and you could be hacked into your computer. You could get a virus from it. And that that method is also called social engineering. So you just have to be very cautious on what you do and what you say and what information you give out. Okay, sounds like we have a real expert today of cyber security from Sacred Hearts Academy. And we're going to take a short break, but we will be right back after the break. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I'm the host of think tech Hawaii's law across the sea. Law across the sea comes on every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii, not just law, love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for law across the sea. Aloha. Aloha and Richard conception, the host of Hispanic Hawaii. You can watch my show every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. We will bring you entertainment, educational, and also we tell you what is happening right here within our community. Think tech Hawaii. Aloha. And we're back. We're live. We're young talents making way. I'm your host, Andrea Gabrielli. And our guest today is Ayanna Arnabit. And we're talking about the exciting and actually very important topic of cybersecurity. What Ayanna, so tell us more. What can we do to protect our computers and protect our information, you know, that we put on the internet and in computers? Why basic things can be like installing a firewall on a computer? Because I know some people, they don't know what a firewall is or how to install one. And it's very important to have one on your computer to prevent any sort of bad thing coming onto your computer. Another thing would be avoiding strange emails from people or getting a USB from somebody you don't know because viruses can be transmitted that way. And your data can be stolen or even worse held for ransom and you have to pay money in order to get your data and information back. And there's a funny story because actually that happened to me. It happened to me once. So when I was in England, I think I luckily was the end of my program. So I basically clicked on one of these emails I think and everything was, you know, stuck. So this is, I can tell you, this is very important. So listen to Ayanna and learn about this, learn with us, learn with me about cybersecurity. Yeah. So basically, now we have, you know, computers, we use them, laptops and everything. We do basically everything with computers. It's our work in there, our information, our contacts as well, passwords. What about our phones? Because phones, you know, I see that people, the daily use of phones is getting, you know, it's going exponential. It's growing day by day. And people save lots of information in there as well. What can you tell us more about, do you do also phones for protecting phones as well? We have some basic information on how to secure a phone or how to keep a phone safe. It's the same concepts that apply to keeping a computer safe, like make sure you have a very strong password protecting your phone. I personally wouldn't advise using the thumb print as, you know, how most phones have, you can put your thumb on your phone and it'll unlock it. Oh yeah, I see so many people do that. I personally wouldn't advise it because it actually takes 13 screenshots of your phone, of your thumb print. So if you get at least one out of those 13, you can get into the phone easier. Unlike if you have a one strong password, it will take so much longer to get into your phone. This is, what about the visual recognition? Because some phones now have, that's what you say, what you just said, apply even to, basically, the facial recognition programs or? I think so, because I remember I read an article a while back where some people were able to hack into Samsung Apes facial recognition by having their camera at a certain setting and putting contact lenses on the eyes of the picture, yeah. No, this is something really that we need to keep in mind. But so basically, with phones, I guess, you know, even with the Samsung and everything Apple as well, what are some basically good passwords that we can use, for example, alphanumerical or with, you know, capital or strange things and also, because we also need to remember these passwords. I am, a good password would be at least eight characters long. Eight characters, yeah. With a mix of capital, lowercase numbers, and those strange characters mixed in it. And to differentiate between the different passwords you have for different websites, you can put like G-O-O-G for your Google password and maybe like Y-A-H for your Yahoo password. Yeah. And it's important, I guess, not to have the same password for all of the, okay. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to change my password. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you mentioned before something about competitions and everything. Are you going to be involved with any of these soon? Yes. There's actually one coming up now called the Girls Go Cyberstart. If you're a high school student in, obviously here in Hawaii, you can sign up for the Girls Go Cyberstart competition at girlsgocyberstart.com by February 16th and you can learn how to secure a computer and the different ways to, different aspects of cybersecurity. And there's no knowledge required at all prior to. You can join without any knowledge at all and it'll guide you through how to be successful in the competition. And as we mentioned, this is very, very important. So go sign up for this competition. So you are really involved with this cybersecurity competitions teaching younger people and what do you do on your free time? On your spare time? If you have any. I like to joke that I don't have any free time, but I, with all my clubs, I genuinely do enjoy all the outreach work I do and all the competing I do. For example in robotics, I had a outreach program with a public school in the Philippines where I helped coordinate a relaunching of the robotics program for their high school. And I, me and my robotics team, we donated all our old robotics kits that were perfectly usable, but we're just, we didn't, we weren't able to use them so we donated them to the Philippines so that they can reintegrate them in their curriculum and inspire a love for STEM there. Oh wow, this is such a beautiful story. That's nice, yeah, yeah, yeah, very nice, very nice. So it sounds like Sacred Hearts Academy is really, you know, pushing for the importance of this field and cybersecurity and computers. How many students, I think we haven't mentioned this, how many students are actually involved with Sacred Heart Academy and who join these programs regarding cybersecurity and computers? I'd say we actually have a good number of students who are interested in STEM, but again it's, I don't think it's enough with the growing need and demand for technology and how everyone needs, everyone uses technology, the amount that's there isn't enough. Like in cyber-patriot, we have about 20 to 30 kids practicing cybersecurity, but at the same time there's 400 students in high school who have a computer, more than actually one electronic device and maybe not all of them know how to properly secure their information. Who doesn't have computers today? So for our viewers, let's basically summarize what we said, so we talked about cybersecurity, how to secure computers, we talked about competitions and even forms, just as a very quick sentence. What's the importance of this cybersecurity program and particularly related to Sacred Heart Academy and your experience there? Cyber security is just an important piece of knowledge that everyone has to know and through Sacred Heart and the Cyber-Patriot program, I've been able to strengthen that knowledge and help others know more about how to secure their computers and secure the different technological devices they have. Thank you, thank you Ayanna. This is truly a wonderful story, wonderful. Thank you for coming here today, thank you for joining us. And so we have Ayanna Arnabit here at Young Talent's Making Way just for Fintech Hawaii TV from doing cybersecurity at Sacred Hearts Academy, just for us here at Fintech Hawaii. And I will see you next Tuesday for something new, something exciting regarding technology and what happens in the world. Thank you, Ayanna. Thank you. Thank you.