Sacred Hearts Academy’s CyberPatriot team will hold a series of presentations on cyber security during the second half of lunch in the conference room Apr. 8-12.

“The students who are on the CyberPatriot team are done with their competitions, and we were looking for something else to do,” said Deborah Kula, coach of the CyberPatriot team and teacher of the Digital Engineering class. “Because the CyberPatriot team deals with security and hunting down viruses and security breaches, we figured it would be good to get the word out around school about cyber security.

“We hear in the news about hackers and viruses bringing down web sites,” said Kula. “It’s not just companies that are being affected. We all use the Internet and we need to make sure we keep our data and machines safe.”

The first presentation on Apr. 8 is on antivirus, antispyware, and antimalware software. The following presentations on Apr. 9, 11 and 12 will deal with mobile security (cell phones), passwords, viruses, worms and trojans.

“It is important for students to be aware of cyber security because their data could be stolen or their equipment could be compromised,” said Kula. “There are some nasty things out there that can completely destroy computers. Especially in schools, they could be used as an unknowing victim sending out threats to others.”