Students encouraged to sign up for cyber challenge

Students encouraged to sign up for cyber challenge

Interest is growing in the second Cyber Security Challenge, organised by the University of Waikato.

Organisers say there’s still plenty of time to sign up for the popular two-day event in September and support will be available to ensure competitors get the most benefit.

People signing up before 7 September will receive free t-shirts and organisers are also arranging shuttle buses to the venue over the two days.

The New Zealand Cyber Security Challenge provides secondary school students an excellent opportunity to be involved in one of the fastest growing technology sectors.

The Cyber Security Challenge is being organised by staff and students from the CROW (Cyber Security Researchers of Waikato) lab and involves a training day followed by a day where competitors are faced with overcoming a range of cyber security challenges.

The training day, on 17 September, will prepare participants for the next day’s challenges. A job and internship fair will start at 10am on 18 September, followed by a welcoming ceremony and talks from the event sponsors and supporters, with the competition starting at 3.30pm and ending at 10.30pm.

Last year’s inaugural event attracted more than 40 people who took on 11 cyber security problems based around a zombie outbreak. Eleven teams managed to clear half the challenges while there was one challenge which no one was able to solve. It was won by a team of university undergraduate students.

This year’s event is based around a pirate scenario and top performers will be in line for some awesome prizes.

Organiser Dr Ryan Ko says last year’s event was a success and he was keen to see secondary school students, industry professionals and other interested people involved this year.

The University of Waikato offers New Zealand’s only masters degree in cyber security and CROW is the only cyber security lab in the country. The New Zealand Cyber Security Challenge is on 17-18 September at the University of Waikato.

The Challenge is also supported by the National Cyber Policy Office, InternetNZ, the Interpol and the Cloud Security Alliance. Sponsors include PwC, HP, Endace, Aura Information Security and Insomnia Security.

Demand for cyber security experts is growing at 3.5 times the pace of the overall IT job market and 12 times faster than the total labour market internationally and the global cyber security market is expected to grow to $94 billion by 2017.

For more information and to register, email info@crow.org.nz or go to https://cybersecuritychallenge.org.nz/

Registration deadline is 7 September.

ENDS

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