Colorado Teen Girls Use Coding Skills In Cybersecurity Competition
THORNTON, Colo. (CBS4) -- High School girls all over Colorado are competing in a cybersecurity challenge.
"This cyber girls thing is really fun. They don't make it too hard, but they don't make it too easy," said Amairany Venzor, a sophomore at Thornton High School said. "We help each other. If someone is stuck we say hey and we help each other be on the same page that way we can all succeed at the same time."
Venzor and about a dozen other girls from Thornton High are in the Girls Go Cyberstart competition. Girls try to accomplish cybersecurity tasks and puzzles in a timed setting. Last year about 250 girls from 24 high school in Colorado took part. Venzor hadn't done any coding before last year, but is now fully immersed and hoping it will lead to a degree and career.
"I went to coding camp at CU Boulder so I leaned a little bit more about coding, using micro blocks and bits so that got me started with it," she said.
She's now in AP Computer Science and hoping to go far in this year's competition.
"I just want to get more into computer science and then figure out what to do after that," she said.
The high school competition is closed but a similar event is still going on for college students at https://go.cyber-fasttrack.org/.