MoTC begins hunt for Qatari cybersecurity talents

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC), in association with the ITU Arab Regional Cybersecurity Centre (ARCC), announces the opening of the Qatar Threat Hunters 2018 Competition for youth aged 17-24, from mid-July to September 2018.

MoTC invited all Qatari talents who have unique skills in the realm of cybersecurity to join the competition via https://cyberstars.pro/profile/register/. Registration is open until August 7, 2018.

This national competition is a part of the Arab “Threat Hunter” competition that is organised by ITU-ARCC for Arab youth to develop their skills and talents in the field. The aim is to qualify and prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professionals and specialists and harness their capabilities for competing regionally and globally.

As the cybersecurity skills gap continues to grow both in the private and public sector, cybersecurity competitions have been recognised worldwide as an effective method for finding new cybersecurity talents and to foster the development of the required cybersecurity competences.

The competition revolves around several questions and challenges on cybersecurity domains such as ethical hacking, system exploitation, ICT infrastructure and system protection, computer forensics and malware analysis. It consists of four phases as shown in the attached file.

The competition is consisted of 4 phases. In the Registration and Pre-Selection phase, interested participants can join the competition until August 7, 2018.

The second phase is the National Semi-Finals, which takes places on August 16, 2018. In this phase, a webpage will be dedicated for each participating country on the competition website for competitors from inside the country and the top 50 participants, according to the highest scores and time consumed, will be selected.

The third phase is the National Final Round taking place in September 2018. In this phase, MoTC, represented by the Qatar Computer Emergency Response Team (Q-CERT), will host the 50 qualified participants in one location that will be decided later. Those 50 will compete at Qatar level in order to select the top first three levels that will compete regionally at the level of Arab countries, which takes place in Oct. 2018 via the portal of the competition where participants from all Arab countries will compete on the first three awards.

Competition winners are going to be awarded during the Regional Cybersecurity Week 2018 for the Arab Region in Kuwait on October 21 to 25.