Kaspersky Lab reveals $10,000 winner of “Cybersecurity for the Next Generation” competition

Woburn, MA – December 20, 2017 – Kaspersky Lab has unveiled the winners of the first international cybersecurity case-solving competition, "Cybersecurity for the Next Generation." The finals took place in Prague, where the main prize of $10,000 was awarded to Philipp Mieden, a student from LMU Munich, for his research on detecting anomalous network traffic.

The second-place prize went to Omar Ganiev, a practical information security consultant from Moscow, who was awarded with a trip to the Security Analyst Summit (SAS) in Cancun in Spring 2018. A team from Gomel – Ivan Meleshko, Arthur Stsepanenka and Ihar Tsalka - received the third-place prize of a visit to the PHDays international forum on applied digital security.

The contest invited students and young professionals from around the world to participate in solving cybersecurity cases, as individuals or in teams of up to three participants. The entrants were asked to pick a case, study additional information and materials, develop a solution and present it to the panel of experts.

"My research focused on detecting anomalous network traffic. This was accomplished by modeling normal network behavior and utilizing machine learning techniques to classify abnormal activity," said Philipp Mieden, the winner of the contest. "The contest gave me a great platform for feedback and gathering new ideas, which encouraged me to continue my research on this topic. A big thanks to Kaspersky Lab and the team that organized the competition, I had a great time!"

The contest received 1,200 registrations, out of which the jury chose 42 finalists from Germany, Italy, Bangladesh, India, Singapore, Russia and Belarus. The finals in Prague narrowed this down to 32 individual and team competitors, all of whom faced a very busy program during the two-day Kaspersky International Academic Partner Summit. Leading cybersecurity experts and scientists took part in a number of presentations and panel discussions addressing some of the latest cybersecurity challenges at the summit. Among them were:

• Christian Aghroum, vice president at CyAN
• Keri Pearlson, executive director at MIT-(IC)3
• Maria Papadaki, associate professor of cybersecurity at the University of Plymouth
• Stuart Hyde QPM, managing director at Stuart Hyde Associates
• Sergey Novikov, deputy director of the Global Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky Lab

"Cybersecurity is a very challenging field and it's important to unite forces when fighting against cybercrime. This contest allowed us to uncover new talent that can help solve some of the real information security challenges facing businesses," said Kirill Shiryaev, head of educational programs at Kaspersky Lab. "It is this next generation of professionals that we need to engage and enthuse today. With the help of Kaspersky Lab, these young people got the chance to prove themselves and form a unique community that will address future challenges."

Contest entrants were also awarded the following prizes:

• A team from Bauman State university – Egor Efremov, Aleksandr Kovalevskii and Nikita Shalna - was awarded an internship at one of the subsidiaries of Gazprom Neft, for the creation of an information security model that protects organizations from data leaks on their technical channels;
• Rosatom awarded a trip to the "What? Where? When?" game show, to a team from Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) and Saint-Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering (SPSUACE). The award was given in recognition of their security solution which allows files to be stored securely in the cloud;
• PWC awarded a prize to Marius Benthin Hochschule Darmstadt from the University of Applied Sciences. Marius created a platform aggregating publically available information on security news in real time;
• Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS Corp. and its Master Distributor in Russia - ITOOLS -awarded a prize to Artyom Nikitin from Skoltech University, for his development of a simple and easy to deploy system of sharing different file formats between company employees.

For more information on the "Cybersecurity for the Next Generation" contest, and other Kaspersky Lab educational initiatives, please visit: academy.kaspersky.com

About Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab is a global cybersecurity company celebrating its 20 year anniversary in 2017. Kaspersky Lab’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into next generation security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company’s comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky Lab technologies and we help 270,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com.

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