YES. Coaches must be present to monitor their students during a round of competition and ensure all competition rules are being followed. 

If you need your mentor or another adult to take over coaching duties for one round, you can submit a request for an alternate coach.

If a coach is unable to perform their duties, they may designate a coach alternate for one round only. To request a coach alternate for the round, complete the Coach Alternate Request Form prior to the start of the round. 

If you are no longer available to fulfill your duties as coach, you may transfer the responsibility to another qualified adult. To request the change, email info@uscyberpatriot.org with subject line: Coach Change Request. Include in the email your name, email address and the team number(s) (xx-xxxx) that you wish to transfer. Also include the name and email address of the individual who will be taking over as coach. 

The new coach must create a volunteer account or already have an existing account with CyberPatriot before the transfer can be processed. The change of coach will need to be approved by the verification official for the team.

There are no scheduled backup dates in CyberPatriot. The emergency competition date is for emergencies as stated in the Rules Book. All requests must be submitted via the Emergency Competition Date Appeal Form by 4:00 PM ET on the Tuesday following the scheduled competition round. Schedule conflicts will not be considered for the Emergency Competition Date.

The image download email is typically sent on the Friday or Monday prior to the competition round start date. The StartEx email is sent at the start of the round (Thursday @ 9:00 AM ET).  A copy of the StartEx email will also be made available on the coach dashboard at the start of the round. If you have trouble locating the information, contact info@uscyberpatriot.org to request a resend. Include your team numbers (16-xxxx) in the body of the email. 

NO. Please DO NOT use vSphere or cloud hosting to distribute your images during any rounds of competition. Doing so may use up the limited number of license keys we have available and may disrupt the facilitation of the competition for all teams.

Yes, you may share the download links with virtual competitors; however, coaches must control the round images and passwords and ensure their proper use by persons known to them. Teams from the same school or organization CANNOT collaborate or share information from the images or Cisco Networking Challenge with each other or any other team.

If necessary, coaches and mentors can walk through the download steps with team members by safely using WebEx, Zoom or conference call. 

Coaches must ensure every team member deletes the images at the end of the round.

A public scoreboard is available during online rounds at scoreboard.uscyberpatriot.org. You can also view your team’s score on the Scoring Report available in the images (desktop icon).

JavaScript is required for some error messages that appear on the CyberPatriot Scoring Report. To ensure that you only receive appropriate error messages, please do not disable JavaScript on any of the images.

A team’s 4-hour competition window begins the moment they open the first virtual image in VMware. If you open an image before your planned competition time, your time begins. If you re-open the image later, you’ll see on the scoring report that the clock has been running, and your four hours may already be expired.

During a competition round, no more than a single copy of the same virtual image may be opened at the same time. For example, if you are running the Windows 10 images on Computer 1 you cannot open a second copy of the Windows 10 image on Computer 2 or 3. See the example below:

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There are certain image security settings that will cause the Stop Scoring Button to malfunction. In the event your team receives an error using the Stop Scoring Button, please shut down the image using the following steps below:

Shutdown or restart the host computer and do not re-open the image or you may incur an overtime penalty. Please ensure the images are deleted at the end of each camp.

Score Correction Requests will only be accepted via the official Score Correction Request Form. The Score Correction Request Form allows coaches to self-report scoring discrepancies or issues during and immediately after the competition (until 11:59 PM ET on the last the day the round ends – Late requests are NOT accepted). Please do not email the CyberPatriot Program Office with documentation unless requested. 

Once the score correction requests are reviewed, coaches will receive an email with the preliminary scores. The email provides information about the Preliminary Score Discrepancy Form​, which is the last opportunity for coaches to request changes to their scores before the scores are finalized and made official. Technical issues and scoring issues such as not recieving points for a fix, image crashes, etc. will not be considered in the Preliminary Score Discrepancy Report form.

Final scores are published on www.uscyberpatriot.org under Competition > Current Competition > Scores. It takes 7-10 business days after the end of the round for scores to be published. Coaches will be notified once the final scores are posted. Until then, please refrain from contacting us about when scores will be available.

Tier placement for high school teams (Open and All Service Division) is located on the published Round 2 Scores​ document. Middle School Division teams are not assigned a tier placement.

If an image that has a correct MD5 checksum does not open, you may try the following:

If you receive a message that your Unique Identifier is invalid, verify and re-enter it. To do this, click the Set Unique Identifier icon on the desktop and enter the full 12-digit UID as displayed on the coach dashboard.

If an image appears frozen, does not score, or otherwise does not function properly, the user has three options:

If an image needs to be restarted (restored to the way it was before any changes were made):

NOTE: If you open a new copy of the image, the score for the image will be reverted to zero. It is important to keep notes of changes that have been made to earn back easily and quickly the lost points.

Our technical staff can help answer questions about image troubleshooting, competition rules, Cisco NetAcad access, software installation, etc.

During competition round weekends, the WebEx chat is the preferred tech support channel. DO NOT email cpoc@uscyberpatriot.org for technical support during a round unless otherwise instructed to by CyberPatriot staff. 

For technical questions outside of competition round weekends, contact cpoc@uscyberpatriot.org or call (877) 885-5716.

Our administrative staff can help answer questions related to team registration, volunteer account lockout, and the coach dashboard. Direct these questions to info@uscyberpatriot.org or call (877) 885-5716.

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