Romania is vice-champion at the European Cyber Security

CERT-RO The National Response Center for Cyber Security Incidents affirmed on Friday that Romania, for the second consecutive year, has become the European vice-champion of the European Cyber Security Challenge – ECSC 2017 cyber security competition held in Malaga, Spain, between 30 October and 3 November. Like in the case of the last year, 2016, Spain won the first place, Romania the second one and Italy the third place.

The European Cyber Security Challenge is an initiative made by the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA), with the purpose of developing cyber security skills of young generation and to facilitate their contact with the private sector organizations that are active in this field.

There have been participated 15 countries:Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Romania, Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Cyprus, Sweden, Norway, Czech Republic, Greece, Estonia, Liechtenstein and Ireland and each of them was represented by a team made from 10 contestants divided into two age categories. First category was represented by teenagers with the age between 16-20 and the second category was represented by individuals with the age between 21-25 years old. The selection included exercises in the field of web application security, attack and cyber defense, cryptography, network traffic analysis, reverse engineering and public presentation.

The first stage of Romanian group selection was conducted online this year betwen June 30 and July the 2nd by the Romanian Intelligence Service, CERT-RO National Cyber Security Incident Response Center and the National Association for Information Systems Security, in association with Bitdefender, Orange, Microsoft, Check Point, eMag, Cisco and Enevo Group. These institutions organized training sessions to encourage the elected teenagers and to develop their unity.

This year, the Romanian team was composed by: Silvia-Elena Pripoae, Cristian-Florin Done, Filip Munteanu, Bogdan Bercean, Neculai Balaban, Cătălin Irimie, Otilion Andrei Mamoc, Ionuț Drăguț, Alexandru Vasile Top and Fineas Silaghi.