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For the third year in a row, the Boeing Center at Tech Port has hosted CyberTexas' Mayor's Cyber Cup Luncheon.

The CyberTexas Foundation, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, supports local middle and high school teams that participate in the CyberPatriot program, a national youth cyber defense competition created by the Air & Space Forces Association and the University of Texas at San Antonio to inspire young people towards careers in cybersecurity — and give them critical real-world experience in the process. 

This year, over 5,000 teams from across the U.S. took part in CyberPatriot, including 337 teams from the San Antonio region. For the ninth year in a row, thanks to CyberTexas’ support, San Antonio fielded more teams than any other city in the country — and more than 48 states. 

Each March, CyberTexas invites all area CyberPatriots and celebrates the top-scoring San Antonio teams at its annual Mayor’s Cyber Cup Awards and College/Tech Fair. For the third year in a row, the event was held at the Boeing Center at Tech Port. 

And as it has done for the past nine years, Booz Allen Hamilton, the advanced technology company and leader in AI and cyber services to the federal government, offered the top San Antonio winning teams four-year paid internships at its San Antonio office. 

Since 2017, Booz Allen has hosted around ten interns per year; this summer, the company’s local office will host more than 20 college students, all of them past CyberPatriot winners. 

“Year over year, this program has converted multiple college graduates into full time Booz Allen employees,” said Bill Morrow, Principal and Site Lead of Booz Allen's San Antonio Major Business Center, “growing our San Antonio team with fresh perspectives and new ideas.” 

Bill Morrow of Booz Allen, which offers four-year internships to the top San Antonio CyberPatriot winning teams.

Leidos, another global cybersecurity and technology giant with offices at Port San Antonio is also an enthusiastic supporter of CyberTexas. 

“We are always looking for cybersecurity talent,” says Rick Lipsey, a regional manager with Leidos, which opened its office at the Port in 2023. “The work Joe Sánchez and other CyberTexas leaders are advancing is absolutely critical to our future viability in cybersecurity. We’ve got to get more young people interested in this work, because it is fundamental to our national security.” 

Rick Lipsey of Leidos, which expanded to Port San Antonio in 2023 and is a longtime supporter of CyberTexas.

The roots of cybersecurity education in San Antonio 

While CyberTexas was formally established in 2015, its roots go back much further, and its history is entwined with the exponential growth of cybersecurity education in San Antonio. 

Sánchez, a former Air Force civilian who retired as the chief of network operations in the then-25th Air Force's 625th Operations Center at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, is the creator and executive director of the CyberTexas Foundation. 

He has been instrumental in the growth of San Antonio’s cybersecurity educational opportunities for more than two decades. He and other key early players began engaging experts at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), co-founding the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS), which launched what would eventually become one of the foremost cybersecurity programs in the nation. 

Joe Sánchez has been instrumental in growing cybersecurity education in San Antonio for more than two decades.

The Cyber Innovation and Research Consortium (CIRC) soon followed, bringing together industry, military and academia to further cybersecurity education at the Alamo Colleges, St. Mary’s University, Texas A&M – San Antonio, Trinity University and other local colleges. 

But Sánchez and others strongly believed that education needed to start even earlier. As the national CyberPatriot program got underway, he began reaching out to local high schools to see if they’d be open to taking part in the effort. 

Participation grew rapidly, and in 2011, the group hosted its first annual Mayor’s Cyber Cup Luncheon to honor the local teams. The following year, the Alamo Colleges’ Information Technology and Security Academy (ITSA), a program for high school students, won the CyberPatriot National Championship. 

Since it began, CyberTexas has supported roughly 20,000 students, providing mentors to participating schools drawn from area industry partners, military agencies and college students — some who are former CyberPatriots themselves. 

That includes Jonathan Gonzalez, now assistant vice president of cyber threat intelligence for Synchrony, a financial services firm. Gonzalez credits his high school CyberPatriot experience with helping land his first internship, which turned into his first job, doing digital forensics and incident response at CrowdStrike. 

Today, CyberTexas is expanding into rural school districts in Texas, and sharing guidance and expertise to other cities to create similarly robust programs. 

A student who begins competing in CyberPatriot in middle school could have seven years of competition under their belt plus several certifications, even before college and internships, Sánchez noted. And that can make all the difference in a competitive job market. 

“Thanks to CyberTexas and partnerships between participating high schools and employers,” he said, “students get a head start in developing real world experience, giving them a proven track record to begin their careers in one of the world’s fastest-growing professions.” 

The FBI was one of many employers who attended the Mayor's Cyber Cup luncheon, seeking the next generation of talent.

See current cybersecurity career opportunities on our campus: www.portsajobs.com

Image credits: Mark Sobhani for Port San Antonio