SPAIN participates another year in the European Cyber Security Challenge in Bucharest

From October 9 to 11, the city of Bucharest (Romania) will host the celebration of the European Cyber Security Challenge (ECSC 2019), an initiative of the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), carried out by a group of European countries organizing national cybersecurity competitions.

This is the largest non-professional technical championship, at European level, in the field of cybersecurity, in which the best young talents selected through national competitions from the different participating countries compete. Its main objectives are to identify cybersecurity talent, help reducing the shortage of qualified professionals in the sector as well as connecting high-potential young people with actors in the cybersecurity industry.

The team Spain is formed by young people from the national CyberCamp 2018 competitions, which passed different technical tests and interviews, allowing the Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE) to prepare a high-performance multidisciplinary team to compete against the representatives of the European participating countries.

INCIBE has selected and trained the Spanish team, consisting of a total of 15 young talents in cybersecurity (10 of whom will be holders in Bucharest), aged between 18 and 25 years. During the training, they have developed determining aspects for the proper functioning of the team such as technical capabilities, as well as soft skills necessary for their integration into a work environment, focusing on teamwork, conflict management during the competition as well as public presentations.

In addition, INCIBE plays a decisive role as a representative of Spain in the Steering Committee of the ECSC, in which relevant decisions are made every year on the format, design and rules of the competition.

A total of 21 countries will seek victory on this sixth edition of the European Cyber Security Challenge. This is a CTF (Capture the Flag) competition, in the modality of Jeopardy style, including different categories of challenges such as reverse engineering, machine learning, web security, cryptography, forensic analysis, networks, wireless and radio hacking, hardware hacking, math and probabilities.

The names and geographical location of the members of the Spanish team 2019, holders in the competition, are: Manuel Blanco (Oviedo, Asturias), Daniel Cuesta (Mieres, Asturias),

Adrián del Prado (Valladolid), Álvaro Díaz (Alicante), Gonzalo García (Tenerife), Jordi Llopis (Ontinyent, Valencia), Rafael López (Córdoba), Yolanda Romero (Córdoba), Javier Sánchez (Toledo) and Alejandro Taibo (Madrid).

Together they will compete to place Spanish cybersecurity talent at the top and to become the best young experts in the sector throughout Europe.
Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland and United Kingdom, together with Romania as host country will be the rival countries of Spain in this sixth edition of the ECSC.

All information regarding the Spanish team is available in the specific section of the competition on the CyberCamp website. The classification marker can be followed live through the official website, on the days of the competition, October 9 and 10. The winning team will meet on October 11 at the closing ceremony.