Loudoun Students Organize Cybersecurity Summit, Contest | Education
Loudoun Students Organize Cybersecurity Summit, Contest | Education
Publish Date: 2026-06-12 22:22:00
Source Domain: www.loudounnow.com
A group of Loudoun County Public School students organized two cyber-based events this semester that they hope will become annual gathering places for area students interested in computer science and cybersecurity.
The two events, CyberSummit and IndyHax, were held at Independence High School in May and June.
IndyHax, a combined hackathon and cybersecurity competition, asked students to complete challenges and build projects based on a prompt to compete for points and win prizes, according to Lalith, one of the student organizers. Tarushv, another student leader, said the event drew students from around Loudoun County as well as Chantilly High School and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, both in Fairfax County.
2026 is the inaugural year for both events. Tarushv said the events were “pretty well-received” and that students, parents, and professionals in the industry have thanked them for organizing these types of events, which the students said are much more uncommon for high schoolers than college students and professionals. Lalith said the prizes in this event set it apart from many high school events.
Technical expertise was not the most important thing for participants, he said. “We were looking for people who know how to innovate. We were looking for people who know how to change the world,” he said. Projects developed in response to the prompts included games, apps, and other programs. One project that organizers gave as an example was a program that pulled from Washington DC crime statistics to create a map of the city showing which areas were safe and which were more dangerous. The group of students who created that program were inspired to do so after being followed by suspicious individuals while in Washington, and Tarushv said that shows that they recognized a problem and wanted to fix it.
Of…
