Students to solve a series of technical tasks of increasing difficulty
Airbus Defence and Space is launching its cyber security ethics challenge “Trust the future”, a competition open to all engineering and IT students from the French Mines-Télécom Institute and the ESIEA (École Supérieure d’Informatique, Électronique, Automatique), EPITA (École pour l’Informatique et les Techniques Avancées) and the INSA (Institut National des Sciences Appliquées) graduate schools of computer science and technologies. In partnership with Télécom ParisTech, the aim of the challenge is to raise awareness for IT security professions and promote careers that focus on the latest cyber security issues.
The challenge begins on 13 November with a series of technical tasks of increasing difficulty, covering areas such as network security, cryptography and reverse engineering. At the end of the first phase, the 30 best students will meet at Télécom ParisTech on 11 December 2014 for the final, where their mission will be to identify the vulnerabilities in a virtual company’s IT system in order to determine how secure its e-commerce site is. The students, who will be grouped in teams of three, will thereby have to thwart all attacks, thus increasing the protection of numerous customers’ personal data. The team with the highest score at the end of the challenge will win the competition and receive a Raspberry Pi. In addition, the winners will have the opportunity to visit Airbus Defence and Space’s CyberSecurity unit in Élancourt.
“This challenge is an opportunity for us to meet students and give them the chance to put their capacity for innovation to practical use. The purpose of this challenge is to promote IT security professions, which require passion, excellence and creativity,” said Jean-Michel Orozco, Head of CyberSecurity at Airbus Defence and Space.
The challenge is part of a dedicated programme being run by Airbus Defence and Space, a major cyber security player in Europe, to help develop competencies for responding to a multitude of cyber security issues by actively engaging with graduate schools in several European countries.
Today, all types of organisations are increasingly faced with targeted, sophisticated attacks whose impact may be critical. Accordingly, there is a fast growing need for IT security experts, a trend that is reinforced by the requirements imposed on French companies and critical infrastructure operators as a result of the military planning law (LPM) adopted in December 2013.
About Airbus Defence and Space
Airbus Defence and Space is a division of Airbus Group formed by combining the business activities of Cassidian, Astrium and Airbus Military. The new division is Europe’s number one defence and space enterprise, the second largest space business worldwide and among the top ten global defence enterprises. It employs some 40,000 employees generating revenues of approximately €14 billion per year.
Contact:
Nelly Tartivel +33 (0)1 61 38 70 60 nelly.tartivel@airbus.com