Bringing together the next generation of cybersecurity professionals, the competition attracts global attention every year, bringing together students from around the world to collaborate on the cybersecurity ideas and challenges they have come up with to contribute to a safer future. Participants have the chance to earn $10,000, understand the requirements of working in the industry, and compete with like-minded students. This year, the competition focused on key areas identified in cybersecurity, including IoT security, machine learning, and new methods and tools for security assessments.
The final round of the competition took place online due to the pandemic. On the other hand, this decision made the competition more accessible to enthusiasts around the world, with 1,500 entries from 68 countries. 11 finalists from various countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Russia, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, United Kingdom, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Germany and India presented their projects to Kaspersky and the jury of industry experts.
Denis Barinov, President of Kaspersky Academy, commented: “Despite all the challenges the world is facing today, we are holding the global Secur’IT Cup competition. We see a rapid increase in the interest of young professionals in this event in particular, and in cybersecurity in general. Every year, with diverse backgrounds from all over the world. We see sophisticated prototypes presented by students that go beyond just the idea. We intend to further support this growing community of young talents united by their interests in cybersecurity. Because that’s what today’s competition is about. We are all driven by a passion for global collaboration, inclusiveness, and building a safer world together. we do. ”
In the competition, the MEPhI Security Team from the national Research Nuclear University MEPhI won first place with their IoT project Baseband IDS Engine. The solution aims to increase the baseband firmware security level and reduce runtime binary exploitation.
MEPhI Security Team Philipp Lebedev said, “The Secur’It Cup is a great chance for every research team to share their experience in the field of information security. We were delighted to take part in this competition together with other participants from all over the world. The feedback from the jury shows that our research is going in the right direction. We will try to continue,” he said.
In light of their efforts, two projects that came in second overall at the event were awarded:
- The WAFLegends team, which brought together students from the Singapore Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore, received praise for their “Next Generation Web Application Firewall” project and was invited to attend Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit 2022, which brings together the world’s leading security experts .
- The SPRUSH team from the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI was invited to take third place to attend a local cybersecurity conference or professional course of their choice on one of the global MOOC platforms.
2021 also saw the introduction of a new category of special candidates to combat cyber violence worldwide. Along with three NGOs – WESNET (Australia), Refuge (UK) and NNDEV (USA)—23 projects were included in this category, and six projects made it to the finals. The winning projects were:
- The Ethics Team representing La Trobe University and Western Sydney University from Australia with the “GLASSES” project, which aims to protect individuals from family and cyber violence by using uncertainty and security;
- Esra Kılıç from Queen Mary University of London with Conscendo, an e-learning platform project involving gamified learning designed to raise awareness to avoid human rights violations.
NNEDV Senior Technology Security Specialist Toby Shulruff said: “The National Network Against Domestic Violence (NNEDV) congratulates OBSECURITY and Conscendo, two projects that won in the Secur’IT Cup’21 in the Fight Against Cyber Violence track. We applaud the efforts and creativity of all teams competing this year. We are grateful to Kaspersky, our partner at Coalition Against Stalkerware, for including this part in its competition in 2021. We encourage more cybersecurity professionals who are focused on victims’ needs and working to make the digital world safer. It was a pleasure to be a jury member at this year’s Kaspersky Secur’IT trophy. All participants spent time focusing on solutions to cyber violence. I was particularly impressed by the ideas focused on solutions for collecting evidence and enhanced reporting features for victims. It was a pleasure to follow the participants’ work and appreciate their valuable contributions to vulnerable people in society. real on “I look forward to seeing it make an impact.”
Two special nomination projects to combat cyber violence were awarded US$5,000 each.
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