From exam to exam
Fun for students with cybersecurity
Even engineering students sometimes struggle with the nuances of cybersecurity, but everyone has to protect themselves from viruses and cyber fraud. We hold information security seminars in Russia and other countries to explain complex notions in an accessible way. These are beneficial for students of any specialization and the seminars serve as a good background for a further semester-long course.
3 days at the Far Eastern Federal University
Located in Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast, the Far Eastern Federal University caters to students from BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Our experts visited this university in March for four-hour lectures over three days in English. First, they covered system vulnerabilities, threats and online security in general. Then they moved on to more advanced knowledge and addressed the investigation of hacks, data leaks, and serious incidents and responses to them, cryptography, and many more topics. Finally, they looked into the most exciting part — the world of cybercrime, including targeted attacks, hacker groups, the DarkNet and social engineering. They also explained how to protect yourself against all of the above.
To reinforce the new knowledge, the students took an intermediary test and played a team game to wrap up the event. Those who had listened attentively and done an excellent job with their home assignments received personal certificates. Others received certificates of attendance.
A record number of participants attended our event in Saudi Arabia, which we organized jointly with the local federation of information security, programming, and drone piloting. It took place online early in June, with over 3,000 attendees.
Kaspersky CyberDay roadshow
How European university students protected oil wells and banks
What could be better than lectures from our experts? Lectures with interactive simulation for knowledge reinforcement! Kaspersky CyberDay is for people with a background in information technologies.
Our experts’ landing force has now conquered Spain, Portugal, Turkey, France, the UK, Germany, Austria, and Singapore with a roadshow around local universities. In Germany and Austria, our speakers even gave lectures in two different towns within one day thanks to the amalgamation of German punctuality and their own unstoppable energy.
The experts usually dedicated the first half of the day to theory. The selection of topics depended on the students’ year and specialization, and varied from the cyberthreat landscape to support for cybersecurity startups.
Then the most exciting part began. The students spent two and a half hours dealing with the simulation of a real-life cyber-attack on oil wells, power plants, or banks. With each turn, the situation changed, and the players had to select the optimal response scenario. They needed to find their way around antivirus products, vulnerability scanners, and other security solutions, secure the company while meeting budget restraints, track sloppy employees, and even publish press releases. "It was just like in real life," the participants said in their reviews, which is the highest praise we could have received for a student course.
Secur’IT Cup
A competition for information security projects
In our quest to make the world a better and safer place, we appreciate it when our students share our passion and transform their ideas into products. To support such innovators, we came up with the Secur’IT Cup, a contest for student research projects.
Every year, we announce three areas in which participants can generate new ideas. In 2020, we asked them to explore machine learning applications in information security, games on the basics of information security, and smart home security. We select the most eye-catching, most original, and most practical of the submitted projects. Their creators participate in the finals to compete for the main prize.
In 2020, the finals will have to take place online, but last year, we invited the finalists to Lisbon. A total of 27 participants from Bahrain, Bangladesh, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, India, Iran, Russia, Singapore, Spain, and Ukraine competed for the main prize — $10,000.
The jury, which included our in-house specialists and industry experts, had to choose from 24 projects. Eventually, they awarded the prize to the team from the National Research Nuclear University (Moscow, Russia). Their project was called Malwario — an advanced AI-based system that detects previously unknown cyberthreats.
SafeBoard
An internship program for those seeking employment with Kaspersky
Kaspersky has been offering multi-stage internships to students for five years. Crucially, our requirements are not limited to subject matter knowledge and motivation. An applicant has to outshine 60 other candidates for an intern position, so the tests are complicated, and the timing is tight. The successful candidates undergo another round of selection, this time in the format of a two-part hackathon. Part one focuses on teamwork, whereas part two tests difficult skills.
Upon successful completion of the hackathon, applicants move on to stage three — learning from our experts. Only those who endure this marathon and pass the interviews with our teams are offered a one-year internship. Interns receive a salary and can combine work with studies because the position requires 15 to 20 working hours a week. The best interns get a job offer.
For now, SafeBoard is available only for students in Moscow and the Moscow Region. Still, we will make sure to develop alternatives for aspiring professionals from other regions and countries.
Teaching fish to swim
Our courses and cybersecurity training for professors
How can you make the biggest impact with teaching? By teaching those who will transfer the knowledge to hundreds of students. This was the vision behind our idea of teaching professors from our academic community.
We offered them a week-long course, after which they could run lectures and hold seminars for students. All of the topics are advanced: cyber-incident response, reverse engineering and system audits.
Last year, we held two extensive training courses. One of them took place in Amsterdam, bringing together 21 selected participants from five countries. The other one brought together professors from all over Russia in Moscow.
The CyberMates community
Building a team of top-notch cybersecurity experts
We draw many of our ideas from the CyberMates community, where we invite ambitious professionals from all over the world. These pros spare no effort in sharing their experience and educating the world about information security, organizing CTF tournaments, hackathons and conferences.