Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity contest now open to Phl students

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino students are given a chance again to show the world their prowess in cybersecurity as Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content and threat management solutions, opens its annual “CyberSecurity for the Next Generation 2014” for the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APAC-MEA) Round.

Students are invited to submit their research papers until Jan. 31, 2014. The entries will be selected by Kaspersky Lab’s experts for the final presentations, which will be held on March 10, 2014 at the Korea University in Seoul, Korea.

Authors of the selected entries will receive notifications via e-mail until Feb. 7, 2014.

The APAC-MEA Cup is one of the five regional rounds of Kaspersky Lab’s global annual conference, a collaborative environment where students, experts, scientists and researchers from all over the world will get together to present and discuss the most burning issues relating to global cybercrime.

The Kaspersky Lab Student Conference also serves a platform for the next generation of experts to share their knowledge and ideas, inspiring them to push the limits of IT security technology still further. This event can also open potential and attractive career opportunities for the participants in the field of IT security.

The research papers’ topics for this year’s conference are:

• Emerging threats for emerging platforms — embedded systems, mobile security (Android, IOS, Windows Phone), Windows 8, Mac OS & other operating systems, etc.

• Securing cloud, virtual and “big data” infrastructure — mail services, storage services, social networks, etc.

• Future protection technologies — proactive detection technologies, filtering technologies, Web application security, etc.

• Securing corporate infrastructure — combating advanced persistent threats (APTS)/targeted attacks, vulnerabilities, exploits, rootkits/bootkits, botnets, DDoS attacks, network security, etc.

• Security education — tools and resources to raise and promote IT security awareness (advertising, marketing).

For this regional round, students taking bachelor, master’s and doctorate from 33 countries in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East, including all countries from Africa, are eligible to join.

The best research papers will receive $1,500 (P60,000) for the first prize, $1,000 (P40,000) for the second place and $750 (P30,000) for the third place. The three representatives of the best papers will be invited to the international conference in Stockholm, Sweden in June 2014.

The date and venue of the international conference has yet to be announced by Kaspersky Lab.

In 2012, two groups of Filipino students from the University of the Philippines (UP) won the top two prizes in the Asia-Pacific and MEA Round and automatically advanced to the global round.

The research paper of the group led by Joshua Lat from UP which proposed for a secure online USB login system for a stronger protection of online accounts, was declared overall winner in the final cup of the same year.

The other Filipino entry represented by UP’s Ranyel Bryan Maliwanag tackled a mobile voice verification system to improve the security of the username-password authentication scheme.

This year, two papers from UP and one from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) made the cut to represent the country in the regional round.

John Ultra presented his research paper on a collaborative access control model for e-voting systems, while Ivan Dominic Baguio represented his group’s paper on an on-the-fly encryption for Android devices. Both are from UP Diliman.

Meanwhile, Marvin Rey Garcia of PUP Sta. Mesa represented his group’s paper on the integration of a virtual private network (VPN) in a secured smart home electricity management system.

Jimmy Fong, Kaspersky Lab’s channel sales director for Southeast Asia, said the Philippines has great talent in developing new techniques and strategies in combating digital threats. In competitions like this, Filipino young minds were able to think forward and come up with something really new.

He added that the Philippines should continue to pursue greater goals because the world needs more specialists in the IT security industry.

“I hope that more and more academicians will continue to influence and encourage Filipino students to show their passion and develop their interest in cybersecurity. Only education will make this possible,” Fong said.

For registration, paper submission process, paper format, conference guidelines and more information about this year’s student conference, go to this link 

http://academy.kaspersky.com/cybersecurity/asia-pacific-and-mea-round-2014/.

Updates are also posted on its official Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/KasperskyStudentConference.