Let’s be trustworthy, the previous few years have been tough on all of us. Shifting our each day routines to match at this time’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 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 turn into much more of a necessity. A lot of our groups working throughout a number of areas and time zones face further obstacles. How can we allow our colleagues to come back collectively and problem-solve vital points in a enjoyable and thought-provoking setting?
Since 2021, the Cisco Product Safety Incident Response Workforce (PSIRT) has been organizing the official Seize-the-Flag (CTF) train for Cisco’s Safety Analysis & Operations group. Contributors have loved the problem and cooperation of the CTF, elevating their consciousness about cybersecurity and studying about evolving assaults and the way to defend towards them.
Yearly since then, we have now strived to create greater, higher, and extra enjoyable CTF occasions. In 2023, our targets had been to:
- Obtain our standard pleasure and nurture our need for collaboration
- Prolong the occasion to early-in-career and non-technical workers to exhibit the significance of cybersecurity consciousness and training for organizations and people alike
This yr, we selected CyberStart, the modern academic platform inspiring the following era of cybersecurity professionals. CyberStart is a fascinating platform sponsored by SANS that provides a whole bunch of technical challenges starting from Offensive Safety to Programming to Forensics via a strong, but enjoyable, gamified narrative. This program additionally features a sturdy infrastructure and dependable help crew to ensure 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. In addition they hosted the Cisco Ladies in Cybersecurity CyberStart Problem in 2020.
Our individuals liked it! However don’t take my phrase for it. Right here’s what we heard from the individuals once we requested them “How a lot did you take pleasure in this occasion?”
“The CTF is nice, however I believe challenges apart, the social points of it, attending to know individuals and work with them, is admittedly worthwhile.” (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 taking a look at recordsdata too in depth, however as soon as I bought going, I used to be having a number of enjoyable. There have been just a few instruments that had been actually exhausting to rise up and working on the Kali VM, so I ended up doing a little challenges on my private pc working ubuntu. I actually would love for it to be longer.” (Claire Griffin – Non-Technical)
“I’m not in an uber-technical position, so I like that I can nonetheless clear up some challenges and usually 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 supposed worth to enroll vs. what number of challenges accomplished.” (Greg Taam – Technical/Non-Technical)
Thank You SANS!
This was such a implausible expertise, and we achieved all our targets to assist cybersecurity specialists, non-technical, and early-in-career individuals be taught new instruments and procedures, have interaction collaboratively, and recognize the way to clear up cybersecurity challenges collectively.
We extremely advocate CyberStart as a platform to find out about frequent cybersecurity threats and the way to examine them in a enjoyable and collaborative manner. Attain out to SANS for extra info.
Thanks, SANS, for this superior platform and for sponsoring our annual occasion. We look ahead to subsequent yr and the better challenges to come back.
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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