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                              "Good afternoon Chuck Hassel,

 Much to update you with from the Howe homefront!  Sorry for my long delay on getting back to you, as things have been hectic here during a time of transition.

 First off, the Cyber team did EXCELLENT on 11-9-16, scoring 190 out of 200 on the images, and one of the two images had a perfect score of 100 out of 100! (A first in Howe history)  They didn’t fare quite as well in Round 2 a week ago, only scoring about 200 out of 300 possible points, but the round was much harder, so hopefully the rest of the teams scores were lower for Round 2 as well.  The team is quite hopeful still to have a good enough combined score to advance to the State Round January 13th.

 The 15 minute process you are referencing below was probably the downloading of a Virus Scanning Tool, such as Windows Security Essentials (a popular one that is available to use in the competition).  Once downloaded, the program does a deep scan of the file system of the computer and alerts the user to any potential threats it finds and gives the user an option to delete the found items, helping to secure the system from future attacks.

 Secondly, I am sad to announce that I will be leaving the Howe Military Academy team on December 29th, 2016.  I have been offered a position as a Network Engineer at Bronson Hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  I will be working to make sure their networks are configured correctly and secured (Guess the Cyber stuff paid off).  I’m sad to leave 10 great years of memories behind, but the opportunity that has been presented to me is one that was very hard to say no to.  This will now put me working in the same city as my wife and will greatly reduce our travel time to and from work if we decide to move to the Kalamazoo area now that we will both be working in the same city.  

 I am putting my trust of the CyberPatriot team in the hands of Nathan Denton (husband of our Science department head Jackie Denton).  He is currently majoring in IT at Glenn Oaks Community College, so he’s steadily improving his knowledge of the subject and materials.  I will MOST DEFINITELY miss the CyberPatriot competitions and your visits during the rounds.  I sincerely would like to say THANK YOU for all of your support along the way and thank you for bringing the CyberPatriot competition to Howe Military Academy!  It has been a great asset to the school and a great marketing tool.

 I hope you and Norma have a WONDERFUL Christmas!  Thanks again for all you have done for me and Howe throughout the years Chuck!

 Blessings,

 Mike Reed, Cyber Coach for Howe Military Academy"