The “International CyberEx 2017” cyber exercise aims to strengthen response capacities for safety incidents
The Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE), entity under the Ministry of Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda, the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the National Center for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures (CNPIC) of the Ministry of the Interior are organizing the third edition of the International CyberEx, an international cybersecurity competition oriented towards incidents response teams which will train the participants' reaction abilities and technical analysis skills regarding cyber attacks.
Strengthening cyber incident response capabilities, in addition to improving collaboration and cooperation in this field, is the main objective of this initiative aimed at technical security profiles with strong knowledge in the field of Information Technology and Communications.
The competition will take place next July 25 in Leon, coinciding with the Summer BootCamp, another initiative of INCIBE and the OAS which is held in the city of León. The countries invited to participate are the Member States of the OAS as well as the countries of the Cybersecurity Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) invited by INCIBE.
The International CyberEx is part of a collaboration agreement between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain and the OAS signed in 2015 in order to develop different cooperation activities which in turn strengthen the levels of protection at the international level in a comprehensive, coordinated and effective way. Spain, through the Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute, has become a benchmark in training and developing international cybersecurity experts.
Format of the Cyber Exercise
The teams participating in the International CyberEx 2017 will consist of maximum five professionals from different fields which will have to solve diverse challenges for a duration of 8 hours.
The cyber exercise will be carried out in CTF (Capture the flag) style. This format is based on a model of cyber security competition and is designed to serve as a training exercise that allows participants to gain experience in tracking an intrusion, as well as to improve reaction capacities to cyber attacks analogous to those that happen in the real world.
The competition will involve several categories of problems with different issues and situations in which the teams can earn points. All teams are competing for being the first to solve the greatest number of challenges in the shortest time possible, but without directly attacking each other.
Participants will be able to perform the cyber exercise in person at INCIBE, for those who are also attending the Summer BootCamp, or remotely. The members should have experience and knowledge in ICT security, especially in security incident management, compromised systems analysis, malware analysis, computer forensics, administration and bastion of operating systems, security audits or network management and communications hardware.
Finally, members of the winning teams will attend the "Regional Symposium on Cybersecurity" which is taking place in Montevideo, Uruguay, from September 26 to 29.
Registration for the CyberEx 2017 is opened until July 7. In order to participate in the cyber exercise, each team must complete the registration form on the website www.cyberex.es/international, where also all information about the International CyberEx 2017 can be found.
