MEA August 2017

24 MEA MARKETS / August 2017 , The world’s biggest student-run cyber security event will get even bigger this year: Cyber Security AwarenessWeek (CSAW), founded 14 years ago, by the NewYork University Tandon School of Engineering, announced it will expand to Israel, whichwill become the fifth country to host the final rounds of competitions that test the skills of thousands of future cyber sleuths and protectors. World’s Biggest Student-Led Cyber Security Games Expand to Israel Students – from high school through doctoral candidates – can begin registering for the preliminary rounds of the varied contests in the hope that they will win a chance to play among the world’s best in the final rounds of competition November 9-17, 2017, in Brooklyn, Abu Dhabi, France, India and Israel. Also for the first time this year, students from Canada and Mexico can qualify for the finals in Brooklyn. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva (BGU) will be one of five global hubs for the event’s signature competition, Capture the Flag (CTF). CSAW Israel, organised by BGU’s Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering and the IBM Cyber Security Center of Excellence (CCoE), is accepting registrations for the qualification round on September 5-6, 2017. The CSAW CTF finals in Israel will be held November 16-17, 2017 at the BGU campus in Beer-Sheva. Final rounds at the other global hubs will be November 9-11. In 2016, NYU Tandon joined with the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Cyber Security and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-Kanpur) to widen CSAW beyond Brooklyn, New York, for the first time by staging simultaneous final rounds for students in the Middle East, North Africa and India. Earlier this year, Grenoble INP - Esisar, based in Valence, France, part of the Grenoble Institute of Technology, became the European hub for CSAW. In 2012, Ben-Gurion University became the first Israeli university and one of the first in the world to offer graduate study tracks in cyber security. IBM’s Cyber Security Center of Excellence at BGU, established in 2014, is a home for an influential team of IBM security researchers and engineers who investigate emerging cyber threats and solutions in collaboration with BGU researchers. The Cyber Security Research Center at BGU conducts applied cyber security research. It is in the new Advanced Technology Park in the Negev, Israel’s new ‘cyber alley.’ “The launch of a new CSAW hub at Ben-Gurion University reflects the spirit of the collaborative innovation between IBM and the university,” said Dr. Yaron Wolfsthal, director of IBM’s Cyber Center of Excellence at BGU. “This collaboration has previously had many forms, such as joint research on cognitive computing methods for cyber security and participation of IBM’s National CERT analysts in BGU educational programs. The latest introduction of the local CTF competition in Beer-Sheva makes our partnership even more influential in establishing Israel as a cyber security leader.” “I believe that the new CSAW initiative with IBM in collaboration with the BGU Software and Information Systems Engineering Department (SISE) and the BGU Cyber Security Research Center is a great opportunity for the advancement of cyber security research at BGU” said Prof. Bracha Shapira, head of the SISE department. NYU Tandon, NYU Abu Dhabi, Grenoble INP – Esisar and IIT-Kanpur are now also accepting registrations for the CSAW elimination rounds in September, which last year pitted more than 10,000 students – from high schools through doctoral programs – against global competitors, all working from their own computers. The competitions will challenge their knowledge of virtually every aspect of information security, from hardware and software penetration testing and