May 9, 2025 – Not all hackers are created equal. Many of them are notoriously no good, but some are a sort of cybersecurity superhero. Just ask Darlene Nguyen.
“I’ve always had an analytical mind, and I like solving puzzles. But I never thought this could actually be a career because of the way they portray hackers in the media as bad people,” says Darlene. “Once I found out what cybersecurity was all about, I knew it was my calling, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Darlene, a Caprock High School and AmTech senior, spends class time learning the defensive side of cybersecurity.
“I’m learning about how to protect companies and keep their clients from having their data breached or stolen by hackers,” says Darlene..
But it’s the offensive side that really gets her circuits firing. “Good” hackers, also known as white hat hackers or ethical hackers, use their hacking skills to identify vulnerabilities and strengthen digital defenses.
Outside of class, Darlene competes against other good hackers to help companies test their vulnerabilities. “These companies post a bounty that’s up for grabs. It could be $50 or up to a million dollars, depending on the difficulty. Basically, they say we need someone to find a security vulnerability, and I compete to do that.”
Darlene and her teammates at AmTech also put their expertise to the test against other teams, advancing to the state SkillsUSA competition. “We placed fourth in cybersecurity, and we were competing against college kids, as well. They had beards and all of that, so it was intimidating,” she laughs.
Because of AI, cybersecurity is still an emerging field, and Darlene hopes to be on the front lines. “With AI, someone can easily whip up code. Even though it’s not accurate, it’s more about the scale of how they do things. So that’s why you see all these phishing emails with grammar mistakes,” she says.
As scammers continue to find new ways to scam, Darlene says there’s one thing we can all do to help protect ourselves. “Change your passwords and follow the password complexity guide,” she cautions. “Also, use a password manager. It stores everything, and you have one master password.”
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