Following the final round of the international Kaspersky Secur’IT Cup student competition on 14 December, the team of students from Egypt and Kuwait placed 3rd overall. This year, more than 1,500 students from across the globe submitted their ideas in four categories: Router Security, Mobile Secure, Chess anti-cheating and a special nomination – Family Care. After expert review, only ten teams were shortlisted to present new ideas to a jury of Kaspersky experts and industry representatives in a friendly but fiercely fought competition.
Mohamed Tarek and Ghadah Bu Dhhair (team Maia AI), students from Egypt and Kuwait studying in Ain Shams University and Franklin University Switzerland, took the 3rd place with their project designed to address financial family needs. The project includes cyber and financial awareness capabilities as well as an AI feature that serves as an advisor and planner. As a prize for the win the team has been awarded to choose any professional course on one of the global Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms.
Mohamed commented: “It was my first time ever to participate in a competition like this. It was an exciting and challenging experience with new topics, sessions, and interactions with top experts. Our mentors and the Kaspersky team helped a lot with our project – and they also tried to make us feel not so nervous during the big presentation. Our project was well received and our team scored third. I really encourage everyone to participate in Kaspersky Secur’IT Cup!”
Over the last five years, the Secur’IT Cup has become a project that united more than 5,000 talented students from around the world, collaborating on innovative cybersecurity projects, with the goal of providing the foundation for a safer tomorrow. By competing in this international contest these ambitious students receive an opportunity to enrich their cybersecurity background and obtain a comprehensive overview of working in the industry.
“The Secur’IT Cup competition was created as a project that would support or maybe even boost the growing interest of young professionals in the cybersecurity industry and help them implement their innovative ideas. From year-to-year we see more sophisticated prototypes submitted by students with diverse backgrounds from all over the world. We have a great record of student teams, who regularly participate in the competition, each time developing new and more creative solutions. That motivates us to continue to support the growing community of young talents united by the idea of creating safe future,” says Evgeniya Russkikh, Academic Affairs Group Manager at Kaspersky Academy.
“Yesterday, I was honored to be one of the Jury members in Kaspersky Secur’IT Cup ’22 hackathon. Top 10 teams pitched their ideas, showed their prototypes of different products. I was happy that a team from the MENA region was among the top three winners. We need more cybersecurity startups and such competitions to help in preparing the new generation of talents for the next wave of cybersecurity needs and to fill in the market gaps. Congratulations to all the winners and looking forward to seeing great products in the market soon,” commented Moataz Salah, the founder and CEO of CyberTalents, jury member at Kaspersky Secur’IT Cup.
The project that won the first place was the Hygiene Platform for Mobile Security (HPMS) presented by the N0H4TS team of students from the National University of Singapore and Singapore Institute of Technology. The solution aims to improve mobile application security development by providing developers with several automatic and custom-made tools they can use for security scans, as well as a basic mobile security framework based on the OWASP Mobile Application Security.
In 2022, the competition has also featured a new special “People’s choice awards” nomination based on evaluation by people watching the live streaming online. Based on their opinion, the best project is a family-focused centralized notification app for banks – AUTCA – created by the Owo team from Singapore University of Technology and Design. The app provides a verified channel of communication between banks and consumers, and aims to reduce the number of phishing scams, and also streamlines financial communication between family members, allowing users to keep track of possible fraud.
The Secur’IT Cup is a project of Kaspersky Academy. To find out more about the competition and the Academy’s other initiatives, please visit https://academy.kaspersky.com/.
