Back row from left are Niko Heinzel, John Thomsen, Ian Kauppila and Hunter Nap. Front row from left are Clara Kruger, Kaylin Doney and Kaitlyn Moebius. (Photo courtesy of NICE Community Schools)

Westwood High School students have received special recognition in the cybersecurity field. A total of 40,000 students from around the U.S. competed in a cybersecurity event called Cyberstart America, with only 1,000 of them earning the designation of Scholar 8. Seven of those students are from Westwood High School. As a result, the seven students have been awarded a scholarship to cover their SANS Foundations course and one attempt at the Global Information Assurance Certification’s Foundational Cybersecurity Technologies certification, worth over $3,000. SANS stands for SysAdmin, Audit, Network and Security. In addition, they can use that certification for three credit hours in many undergraduate college programs.