Regular Cyber Competitions and Challenges
Test your cybersecurity or digital forensics skills at a cyber completion!
There are many groups and organizations that host cybersecurity or digital forensics competitions and challenges on a regular or annual basis. Theses challenges range from ones designed for seasoned industry professionals to others are aimed toward high school students and individuals just beginning to be interested in the cybersecurity. Here is a list of some popular challenges:
- OWASP Security Shepherd — The Capture the Flag (CTF) Challenge is run every Fall and Spring term as part of the CYB409 Web Application Security course. Contact Jesse Roberts, [email protected], for more information on participating.
- CyberPatriot National High School Cyber Defense Competition — Read how NEIT faculty mentored the East Greenwich High School team to a first place finish in Rhode Island!
- CCRI Cybersecurity Club — They regularly field a team for the Global Cyberlympics and other hacking competitions. Contact them if you are interested in joining their student team.
- SANS Cyber Foundations National Challenge — Cyber Aces Competition
Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics Conferences
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks.
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.
HTCIA International Conferences — High Technology Crime Investigation Association.
Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics Organizations
CAE Community
About the Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity Community:
Education
The mission of the CAE in Cybersecurity Community is to provide CAE designated institutions with resources to aid in individual success through workshop facilitation, marketing efforts, and communication tools.
Government
The CAE in Cybersecurity Community actively engages with government representatives to provide educational workshops, opportunities for funding, conferences, and working groups for CAE designated institutions.
Industry
The CAE in Cybersecurity Community partners with industry to ensure that students entering the next generation cyber workforce have the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities for a successful career in cyber.
Southern New England Defense Industry Alliance (SNEDIA)
The Southeastern New England Defense Industry Alliance (SNEDIA) works with local schools, Real Jobs RI and P-Tech Cyber to ensure Rhode Island has trained cybersecurity professionals to meet industry needs. SNEDIA advocates policies and legislative initiatives that will positively affect the welfare of regional military installations and other defense and federal installations, provides elected officials with the information necessary to fully represent the positions and needs of their constituents, enhances the relationships between the local communities, their elected representatives, and the DoD/Federal government organizations, informs and educates the citizens of Southeastern New England on the critical importance of the Defense industry’s impact on the regional economy.
NIST’s Computer Security Division
NIST’s Computer Security Division’s mission is to provide standards and technology to protect information systems against threats to the confidentiality of information, integrity of information and processes, and availability of information and services in order to build trust and confidence in Information Technology (IT) systems. Since the mid-1990s, NIST’s Computer Security Division’s Resource Center (CSRC) has provided resources on computer, cyber, and information security and privacy.
The SANS Institute
The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. Its programs now reach more than 165,000 security professionals around the world. A range of individuals from auditors and network administrators, to chief information security officers are sharing the lessons they learn and are jointly finding solutions to the challenges they face. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners in varied global organizations from corporations to universities working together to help the entire information security community.
SANS is the most trusted and by far the largest source for information security training and security certification in the world. It also develops, maintains, and makes available at no cost, the largest collection of research documents about various aspects of information security, and it operates the Internet’s early warning system – the Internet Storm Center.
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is the Nation’s risk advisor, working with partners to defend against today’s threats and collaborating to build a more secure and resilient infrastructure for the future.
CISA provides extensive cybersecurity and infrastructure security knowledge and practices to its stakeholders, shares that knowledge to enable better risk management, and puts it into practice to protect the Nation’s essential resources.
National CyberWatch Center
The National CyberWatch Center is an Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Center, headquartered at Prince George’s Community College and funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The CyberWatch a consortium of higher education institutions, businesses, and government agencies focused on collaborative efforts to advance Information Security education and strengthen the national cybersecurity workforce. The CyberWatch goals are focused on information assurance (IA) education at all levels, from elementary through graduate school, but especially the community college level, and include curriculum development, faculty professional development, student development, career pathways, and public awareness.
OnGuardOnline.gov
OnGuardOnline.gov is the federal government’s website to help you be safe, secure and responsible online. The Federal Trade Commission manages OnGuardOnline.gov, in partnership with the federal agencies listed here. OnGuardOnline.gov is a partner in the Stop.Think.Connect. campaign, led by the Department of Homeland Security, and part of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The HoneyNet Project
The Honeynet Project is an international 501c3 non-profit security research organization, dedicated to investigating the latest attacks and developing open source security tools to improve Internet security. With Chapters around the world, our volunteers have contributed to fight against malware (such as Confickr), discovering new attacks and creating security tools used by businesses and government agencies all over the world. The organization continues to be on the cutting edge of security research by working to analyze the latest attacks and educating the public about threats to information systems across the world.
Founded in 1999, The Honeynet Project has contributed to fight against malware and malicious hacking attacks and has the leading security professional among members and alumni. Their mission reads “to learn the tools, tactics and motives involved in computer and network attacks, and share the lessons learned” with three main pillars — Research, Awareness, Tools.
Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3)
The Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center is designated as a federal cyber center and Department of Defense center of excellence, and serves as the operational focal point for the Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Program. DC3 operates under the executive agency of the Secretary of the Air Force.
DC3’s mission is to deliver superior digital and multimedia (D/MM) forensic services, cyber technical training, vulnerability sharing, technical solutions development, and cyber analysis within the following DoD mission areas: cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection, law enforcement and counterintelligence, document and media exploitation, and counterterrorism.
Center for Internet Security
CIS® (Center for Internet Security, Inc.) is a forward-thinking, non-profit entity that harnesses the power of a global IT community to safeguard private and public organizations against cyber threats.
The CIS Controls® and CIS Benchmarks™ are the global standard and recognized best practices for securing IT systems and data against the most pervasive attacks. These proven guidelines are continuously refined and verified by a volunteer, global community of experienced IT professionals.
Our CIS Hardened Images® are virtual machine emulations preconfigured to provide secure, on-demand, and scalable computing environments in the cloud.
CIS is home to both the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (MS-ISAC®), the go-to resource for cyber threat prevention, protection, response, and recovery for U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial government entities, and the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center™ (EI-ISAC®), which supports the cybersecurity needs of U.S. State, Local and Territorial elections offices.