"Get a pot of coffee/tea and your music playlist ready. We want to see you formulate ideas to help build a better South Africa post-COVID-19. Develop solutions that are secure by design. Present what you have built to a panel of judges. Get awarded for the effort."
This was the message from Tiyani Nghonyama, Geekulcha COO, to the participants of ITWeb's virtual Security Summit Hackathon, which kicked off this morning.
The 4th edition of the security hackathon is hosted by ITWeb in collaboration with Geekulcha and aims to develop the local information security skills pipeline.
More than 120 young techies/geeks from around the country and in Kenya have signed up to build their information security skills.
A panel of industry experts led hack participants through Q&A sessions and helped them brainstorm solutions. The ideathon also aimed to give participants a better understanding of the threat landscape and helped them explore the career choices in infosec.
All teams will now submit an outline of their solutions and receive further guidance from the mentors. This will be followed by three days of coding, and final presentations on day three of the ITWeb Security Summit, on Thursday, 27 August.
The fourth edition of the hackathon, hosted in partnership with Geekulcha, will see more than 100 young techies from around the country and as far afield as Kenya strengthen their information security skills.
Nghonyama, who chairs the Security Hackathon, says: "This hackathon presents an opportunity for young people to contribute towards building national capacity in cyber defence. After COVID-19, we have to emerge stronger as a country.
“With South Africa being one of the most targeted countries in cyber attacks, we need to ensure that the basics are well taken care of, equipping local geeks with the information security know-how,” adds Nghonyama.
Prizes in the hackathon include four information security learnerships from Snode Technologies and cash for the top three solutions (R20 000 for 1st place, R10 000 for 2nd and R5 000 for 3rd).
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