The European Cyber Security Challenge is an initiative by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and aims at enhancing cybersecurity talent across Europe and popularising cybersecurity as an excellent college and career choice.
The ECSC competition has been run since 2016 and Ireland has competed in almost every competition since then. The event is hosted by a different country each year, and 2024 sees Italy take over the hosting. This year’s competition will be the largest yet with around 40 countries competing.
Over the past decade, many countries have launched national cybersecurity competitions targeting students, university graduates or even non-ICT professionals with a clear aim to find new and young cyber talents and encourage young people to pursue a career in cyber security. The European Cyber Security Challenge (ECSC) leverages these competitions by adding a pan-European layer; the Eurovision of Cybersecurity!
Each European country hosts their own national cybersecurity competitions. The winners of the national contests represent their countries in the ECSC. For Team Ireland we host a number of qualifying competitions including CyberSecurityChallenge.ie, ZeroDays CTF, Cyberwise CTF, with plans to host provincial CTFs in the next year, with the top players from each province forming teams to compete in an All-Ireland Final. From these qualifying events a larger squad is chosen to participate in training bootcamps online and in-person, before the final team of ten is selected in late August. The squad is very diverse with excellent representation of female, neurodiverse and LGBTQ+ players.
Similar to the ECSC, the national cybersecurity competitions consist of security-related challenges from domains such as web security, mobile security, cryptography, reverse engineering, binary exploitation, forensics and hardware security, which the participants must solve in order to score points.
Team Ireland is run by a team of volunteer coaches, mentors and helpers led by Mark Lane from ZeroDays CTF. We are up against some European powerhouses who are backed by huge resources and financing, and we rely entirely on partnering with sponsors from Industry and Academia, including Cytidel and TU Dublin. Supporting Team Ireland is a fantastic opportunity to positively influence and support the best young cyber-security talent in Ireland and abroad, and to interface directly with the brightest and best the cyber-security students in the country, and to help showcase Ireland as a leading cybersecurity hub in Europe.
The ECSC finals take place in Turin, Italy from 7th to 11th October, and will feature major promotion on social media, mainstream media and will be live streamed. The ECSC organisers will also be producing professional videos and live streaming from the event, which takes place in the incredible OCR venue in the heart of Turin. Team Ireland will also be accompanied by a professional photographer/videographer/social media manager and will produce a highlights video of the event.
Last year the team participated in the ECSC in Hamar in Norway.
Some of the benefits of supporting the team include:
- Associate your company with Team Ireland, and supporting future development of the cyber security field in Ireland
- To be part of nurturing the best of Irish cyber-security talent, taking part in an ENISA-supported CTF featuring teams from 40 countries in 2024
- Promote your company directly to the top competitors from third-level colleges, universities and companies in Ireland, EU and further afield
- Meet and network with the next generation of upcoming cyber-security talent
- Position your company brand at the forefront of cyber-security in Ireland and internationally
- Calendar of #TeamIreland related events planned including training bootcamps, CTFs and the ECSC Finals.
If you would like to support the Irish Team please contact Mark Lane of ZeroDays for more information: [email protected]