Most Important Cybersecurity Challenges
Cybersecurity competitions are a great way to test your knowledge and skills with hands-on experience. These challenges open involve solving puzzles, group competitions, or Treasure Hunt-type puzzles.
The cybersecurity challenges are focused on coding, cryptography, malware detection, safeguarding servers, and much more. Some events are individual, while some are team events.
Here is a list of some top cybersecurity competitions that you can participate in and put your skills to the test.
1. Global Cyberlympics
Hosted by EC - Council Foundation, this is a global level contest that welcomes enthusiasts for network exploitation, web applications, digital forensics, and some other challenges. For this event, people from around the world can form teams to take part. The twelve-hour elimination round happens online. Selected teams qualify for the final event. To be a part of Global Cyberlympics, you need a team of 4 to 6 players that are 18 or older. If you win, you and your team can win $1500 along with EC- Council Certification Course, certification exam vouchers. The runner-up team can win $1000 with a certification course. And the team that comes third can grab the $750 prize and certification course.
2. National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
Raytheon and CIAS host the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. This event is meant for college students. To make it to the finals, students have to compete and win regional competitions. They select winners from these to be the top 10 finalists. This contest is focused on how well the competitors respond to two business requirements and external threats. Basically, you have to achieve a balance between security requirements and business. To be a part of this competition, you have to be a full-time student. Your team must also have a coach. The winners are awarded the Alamo Cup.
3. National Cyber Analyst Challenge and Conference
This event is organized by Temple University for college students and teachers. A conference and workshop follow the event. As the name suggests, the challenge is about analyzing problems and finding solutions to them. The competition takes place in 3 levels. - case analysis - workshop - ultimate challenge To participate, your team must have four to five students along with a faculty member. The challenge is only for people involved in a formal cyber program. Undergraduates masters students can take part. The winning team will be awarded $4000 for each team member.
4. iCFT Competition
UC Santa Barbara organizes the iCTF competition every year. This is like Capture The Flag, just in a cyber version. The competition focuses on maintaining the services' integrity as the team battles to fix the problems in their servers. Only college students can take part in this event. You need to have a team if you plan to take part in iCTF. Awards include cash prizes.
5. Digital Forensics Security Treasure Hunt
This treasure hunt's challenges have been crafted by SANS Digital Forensics Team, DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge, and US Cyber Challenge. This is one of its kind treasure hunt in a virtual setting. The competitions include network, disk, and memory forensics. This is an online competition with no cap on time. Which means anyone can participate. With the rapid rise in digitalization, there is an increasing threat of cybersecurity. Especially, the ransomware attacks have been multiplying at an alarming rate. And therefore, we need more cybersecurity professionals to combat attackers, malware and secure our data and sensitive information. Cybersecurity competitions are hosted with the aim of fine-tuning skills and building a powerful network of Cyber professionals.