Cyber Security EPQ
Six RGS Upper Sixth Form students recently attended the virtual graduation ceremony for their Cyber Security EPQ.
David H, John O, Max C, Tae K, Harrison B and Ahmad H were the second cohort from RGS to participate in and complete this unique Qufaro and City & Guilds course, which, despite the lockdown, was assessed as normal and all were awarded A*. As part of their graduation and in recognition of their achievement, they have all been given honorary membership to the prestigious Chartered Institute of Information Security (CiiSec).
David H’s project on Bitcoin security and Harrison B’s project on the part humans play in creating security risks were both awarded additional prizes by the course sponsors, Deloitte, with David H being awarded second prize nationally.
Other project titles this year included:
- How safe is it to use Public WiFi?
- How effective are free penetration testing tools?
- Can a system ever truly be secure?
- Digital Forensics: How easy is it to actually recover deleted data?
The EPQ is a level 3 qualification that certified by City & Guilds, and is completed in the Lower 6th as part of the Henry Smith Studies. It is worth up to 28 UCAS points.
“I chose to do the CyberEPQ because I always had an interest in cyber security and it let me further explore areas of the topic that I otherwise never would have thought about. The MOOC preceding the essay went into depth about the history of computing, forensics, penetration testing and other related topics. I decided to write my essay on the viability of free penetration testing tools, and I tested these tools against a secure server with built-in vulnerabilities. I was happy to have received an A* for my project, and I believe it provided valuable insight into the style of research that you’d perform for a project in university. I highly recommend it. “
Max C
“I chose to take the Cyber Security EPQ because, in my opinion, it was the most interesting of the choices presented. The cyber industry has always been one I enjoy reading about, as it affects most of our lives every day. For the EPQ, I chose to study digital forensics and data recovery, as during one of the modules of the online course, I was greatly interested in this topic. During the research portion of the course, I had the opportunity to interview the lead digital forensics investigator at a global satellite company. I also had the opportunity to use military grade data recovery tools to recover data from an external hard drive. The EPQ opened many doors to me and was one of the most interesting research projects I have been a part of. “
John O
“I chose the Cyber EPQ as I wanted to explore beyond the Computing curriculum and learn more about cybersecurity. The structure especially appealed; the online course showed me the breadth of subject areas available and helped me come up with a project title I was interested in and motivated to write about. I wrote my project on ‘How Secure are Cryptocurrencies’ and, as well as learning a great deal about cryptocurrencies, I gained invaluable experience in writing and researching a longer form essay. I was delighted to hear my essay had been shortlisted and was awarded 2nd place nationally!”
David H
