Baltimore city sophomore competing for $1K scholarship in 2014 TechAwards

Ockeive Farquharson will tell you his favorite class is Honors English, but this sophomore at ACCE Academy in Hampden has a knack for stopping malware.
He’s one of three high school students from the Baltimore region nominated for the Future Innovator Award as part of the 2014 Chesapeake Regional Tech Council TechAwards. For the first time this year, the award comes with a $1,000 scholarship.
Farquharson, 15, begins a paid internship at cybersecurity company CyberPoint International this summer, but it was his CyberPoint training over the course of several weeks last November and December that caught the attention of the TechAwards. Using an automated malware reverse-engineering system developed by CyberPoint, Farquharson successfully analyzed the “HDAudio.exe” malware.
“It was looking at a virus and figuring out where it came from, who created it and how to get rid of it,” said Farquharson, who was at downtown computer-training nonprofit Digit All Systems on a recent Saturday to study for his Network+ certification. “The program made it easy to tear through the malware.”
Watch a short video about Farquharson:

It was Digit All Systems that helped Farquharson — a native of Jamaica who moved to New York City in 2003 and spent half a decade there prior to moving to Baltimore’s Forest Park neighborhood — score the CyberPoint internship.
Farquharson said he hopes to study computer science in college, and is considering Towson University and Morgan State University as his local options.