Let’s be sincere, the previous couple of years have been tough on all of us. Shifting our each day routines to match right now’s hybrid-work setting has been fairly a problem. A few of us are nonetheless adapting to our new method to work – whether or not hybrid or absolutely distant.
This problem just isn’t new to us at Cisco. Earlier than the pandemic, we had globally dispersed groups. However discovering a steadiness between work and private life post-pandemic has grow to be much more of a necessity. Lots of our groups working throughout a number of areas and time zones face extra obstacles. How can we allow our colleagues to return collectively and problem-solve necessary points in a enjoyable and thought-provoking setting?
Since 2021, the Cisco Product Safety Incident Response Crew (PSIRT) has been organizing the official Seize-the-Flag (CTF) train for Cisco’s Safety Analysis & Operations group. Individuals have loved the problem and cooperation of the CTF, elevating their consciousness about cybersecurity and studying about evolving assaults and the right way to defend in opposition to them.
Yearly since then, now we have strived to create greater, higher, and extra enjoyable CTF occasions. In 2023, our objectives have been to:
- Obtain our common pleasure and nurture our want for collaboration
- Prolong the occasion to early-in-career and non-technical staff to reveal the significance of cybersecurity consciousness and schooling for organizations and people alike
This yr, we selected CyberStart, the progressive academic platform inspiring the following era of cybersecurity professionals. CyberStart is an interesting platform sponsored by SANS that provides a whole bunch of technical challenges starting from Offensive Safety to Programming to Forensics by a strong, but enjoyable, gamified narrative. This program additionally features a sturdy infrastructure and dependable help crew to verify the CTF train runs easily.
We had greater than 60 gamers from all over the world, talking greater than 10 languages, with some technical gurus and a few informal CTF players at their very first CTF expertise. However this wasn’t the primary time Cisco and SANS partnered for a CTF occasion. Additionally they hosted the Cisco Girls in Cybersecurity CyberStart Problem in 2020.
Our contributors liked it! However don’t take my phrase for it. Right here’s what we heard from the contributors once we requested them “How a lot did you get pleasure from this occasion?”
“The CTF is nice, however I believe challenges apart, the social facets of it, attending to know folks and work with them, is admittedly useful.” (Nick Leali – Technical)
“I actually loved it. I wasn’t significantly enthusiastic about doing it simply because I’m not in a technical position and don’t have a lot expertise with analyzing issues like pcap, mem, or recordsdata too in depth, however as soon as I obtained going, I used to be having numerous enjoyable. There have been a number of instruments that have been actually exhausting to stand up and operating on the Kali VM, so I ended up performing some challenges on my private pc operating ubuntu. I actually would love for it to be longer.” (Claire Griffin – Non-Technical)
“I’m not in an uber-technical position, so I really like that I can nonetheless clear up some challenges and customarily have most instruments within the UI wanted to achieve success on the extra modest challenges.” (Travis Kober – Technical/Non-Technical)
“Nice occasion, and for me getting a crew collectively for some crew bonding was the very best and meant worth to enroll vs. what number of challenges accomplished.” (Greg Taam – Technical/Non-Technical)
Thank You SANS!
This was such a improbable expertise, and we achieved all our objectives to assist cybersecurity consultants, non-technical, and early-in-career contributors be taught new instruments and procedures, interact collaboratively, and respect the right way to clear up cybersecurity challenges collectively.
We extremely advocate CyberStart as a platform to find out about widespread cybersecurity threats and the right way to examine them in a enjoyable and collaborative manner. Attain out to SANS for extra data.
Thanks, SANS, for this superior platform and for sponsoring our annual occasion. We stay up for subsequent yr and the larger challenges to return.
We’d love to listen to what you assume. Ask a Query, Remark Under, and Keep Linked with Cisco Safe on social!
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