EU Competitions: Cyber Security Enthusiasts Invited to Enter

There is a growing need for trained IT professionals with the right skills to address the challenges of the fast-expanding cyber security landscape. In response to this, some nations have begun to organise national cyber security competitions aimed at students, university graduates and even non-ICT professionals to promote new entrants into the profession. 

This month there are two significant cyber security competitions with this aim - one set up by the European Union and the the other  a private sector event :-

The European Cybersecurity Challenge:   The European Union’s annual campaign dedicated to promoting cyber security among EU citizens and organisations and to providing up-to-date online security information through awareness raising and sharing of good practices.

The Czech Republic will host the sixth edition of the European Cyber Security Challenge - the annual European event that brings together young talent from across Europe to have fun and compete in cybersecurity!

Top cyber talents from each participating country will meet in Prague to network and collaborate and finally compete against each other. Contestants will be challenged in solving security related tasks from domains such as web security, mobile security, crypto puzzles, reverse engineering and forensics and in the process collect points for solving them.

The competition will be held on Friday 15 October, marking the European Cyber Security Month , which is an annual campaign which aims to raise awareness of citizens, organisations, companies and institutions about the major cyber threats.

The three teams that achieve the highest scores come the end of the event will then present a report explaining the strategies they adopted during the challenge. 

Reply Cybersecurity Challenge:     The Cybersecurity Challenge is part of Reply’s Challenges programme, which seeks to target the most innovative trends in coding, creativity, cybersecurity, and finance.

The fourth instalment of the Reply Cybersecurity Challenge is set to launch on 15th October, with applications now open for teams to register and take part. The group coding contest is open to cyber security enthusiasts and professionals worldwide, with support this year coming from Intesa Sanpaolo, one of Europe’s top banking firms, and software company Immersive Labs. Last year’s challenge drew more than 10,000 participants from 160 countries, forming 2,380 teams of two to four players.

The competition consists of a 24-hour marathon Capture The Flag (CTF) tournament, focusing on the identification of vulnerabilities purposely hidden within software and computer systems.

The final score will then be determined by the highest number of hidden flags identified, plus a bonus awarded for the quick resolution of the problems.

Developed by cyber security experts from Reply, the contest includes five gaming categories – coding, web, binary, crypto, and miscellaneous – which see players attempt to solve security problems and riddles of increasing difficulty in the fastest time.

The challenge is accompanied by the Train&Win programme, which allows teachers and students of more than 16 years to train together with problems to solve in CTF mode on the Reply Challenge platform, as well as win devices to be used for educational purposes. The platform can be used as a cyber security gym, with exercises and study materials available to help them prepare for the international competition. 

Applications are now open and will stay open until 15 October. Teams can register for free, either submitting the details of their team or by joining other players in random teams, and can then train in ‘sandbox’ mode on the challenges of previous editions.

Reply Challenge:     ECSC:        CybersecurityMonth.EU:       Digtal Skillls.EU:         EdTechnology: 

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