“Eighth Edition of International CyberEx ’25 Will Be Taking Place”

On 10th September at 4:00 p.m. Spanish time (14:00 UTC), Antonio Hernando Vera, Spain’s Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure, will preside over the opening of this initiative, co-organised by the National Cybersecurity Institute of Spain (INCIBE) – a body under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, through the State Secretariat for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure – and the Organisation of American States (OAS). Representing the OAS at the opening will be Guillermo Moncayo, Deputy Executive Secretary of the OAS’s CICTE.

The International CyberEx is an international competition whose main goals are to foster international cooperation – particularly among CSIRT/CERT teams – through the simulation of real-life cyberattack scenarios. The exercise aims to promote hands-on preparedness, identify areas for improvement in both individual and collective skills, and support developing countries in strengthening their national capabilities. Another key pillar is the promotion of a cybersecurity culture through training and awareness-raising.

The competition is aimed at professionals from Cybersecurity Incident Response Teams (CSIRT and CERT), as well as technical cybersecurity experts from the public and private sectors, the military, academia and civil society, all of whom are required to demonstrate high-level knowledge and experience in ICT.

In the 2025 edition, 84 teams comprising 318 specialists from incident response units in 17 countries will compete. Among them, nearly 60 teams come from within the OAS framework, while over 25 teams represent Spain and the rest of the world. Special mention goes to the participation of five teams and 19 experts from Spain’s national young talent cybersecurity squad, currently training for the European CyberSecurity Challenge.

Since the launch of the International CyberEx in 2016, more than 460 teams – representing over 1,600 CERT and CSIRT specialists from more than 40 countries – have taken part across its seven editions.

This year’s event will run on 10th September 2025 from 14:00 (UTC) to 22:00 (UTC), lasting an estimated eight hours. Once the competition ends, all participants will join a videoconference session where the exercise results will be shared and the top ten teams announced.

For the competition, INCIBE will provide the execution platform and the necessary infrastructure, including the challenge environment, gaming system and scoring mechanisms.

The cyber exercise will be conducted in a team-based CTF “jeopardy” format, featuring technical challenges across multiple categories: reconnaissance, web, operating systems, forensics, cryptography, steganography, exploiting and reversing. This format is designed as a cybersecurity competition but also as a training exercise, enabling participants to gain experience in handling cyber incidents and honing their ability to respond to cyberattacks similar to those occurring in the real world, including intrusions, software vulnerability exploitation, web attacks, reverse engineering and forensic investigations.

Ten years since the signing of the Spain–OAS cooperation agreement

The International CyberEx forms part of the cooperation agreement signed in 2015 between Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation (MAEUEC) and the OAS. Its objective was to develop joint actions to strengthen international protection levels in a comprehensive, coordinated and effective way – an endeavour that has proved highly successful, as evidenced by its growth and results.