Cybersecurity educational competition #KiberPlēsis

• January 29, 2024
• admin

#KiberPlēsis is a 48-hour educational cybersecurity competition organised by the security technology company CYBER CIRCLE to attract young people’s interest and encourage them to choose cybersecurity as their future profession.

The contest is aimed at young Latvians aged 16-24, challenging themselves and becoming heroes of cyberspace, addressing the challenges in the Capture the Flag (CTF) format. The audience was selected with the aim of discovering talent at secondary school age and in the group of students in the first course of university. Young people, girls and young people who may not yet discover their own talents, as well as seriously reflect on the cybersecurity industry as their future profession.

The chosen competition framework for the CTF or ‘Atrodi flags’ is one of the most popular formats of the Derby technology game in the field of cyber and information technology security. CTF competitions are an educationally targeted set of digital doughs in a web, file and app code where hidden signs and details are to be found. This format has been favoured by ‘white’ hackers, technology experts and enthusiasts who find different types of security vulnerabilities and report to prevent them and improve secure digital platform work in the future.

Sets of tasks for cybersecurity competitions for different levels of complexity in the following areas:

• Reverse engineering
• Network data expertise
• Cryptographic expertise
• Data Expertise
• Steganography

In addition to testing practical skills during cyber races in several cybersecurity disciplines, the CyberPleis initiative was very popular between Latvian universities and secondary schools, as well as in Latvian society as a whole and in the cybersecurity community separately. This is the first such cyber race in Latvia.

#KiberPlēsis brings together more than 50 participants each year. In addition, some of the CyberPles 2022 participants took advantage of the opportunity to take up a traineeship at the organiser company, and one of the participants took the opportunity to start a career in the CyberPles’ company during the summer holiday.

“Cybersecurity has become one of the strategically important sectors, the topic of which has been growing not only in Latvia but globally in recent years. The aim of the competition is to attract interest and encourage young Latvians, both in girls and boys, to link their professional careers to the prospective area of cybersecurity. Today’s heroes are increasingly present in cyberspace, so I call on young people to use these competitions as a platform for their growth,” stresses Alexander Orlovs, founder and CEO of CYBER CIRCLE.

In the future, the CyberPles are also expected to develop into a different format, possibly offering them not only as individual competitions, but also team competitions and competitions between educational institutions.

Cyber CIRCLE is a Latvian cybersecurity expert provider that offers tailored services to organisations to develop and improve cybersecurity. Cyber CIRCLE CSIRT (Cybersecurity Incident Response Team) helps organisations to deal effectively with security incidents, conduct incident investigations, address related risks and put in place safeguards. For the CyberPles initiative, the organisers of CYBER CIRCLE received the 2023 award from DAIF Latvia’s ‘Annual Latvian Defence and Security Industries Award 2023’ and the ‘platinum mouse’ award in the ‘Best Cybersecurity Initiative’ category.

#KiberPlēsis