Trend Micro, a cybersecurity solutions leader, launched its fourth annual Capture the Flag (CTF) competition, which demonstrates the skills and challenge the knowledge in today’s critical areas of cybersecurity protection. The competition’s objective is to motivate and train talent to support the critical industry needs.

Eva Chen, CEO, Trend Micro, says, “At Trend Micro, we have always been passionate about fighting the bad guys to make the world safer for exchanging digital information, and skilled professionals are imperative to make that a reality. We recognized there was a growing need for more strong professionals, so four years ago we began our global CTF to encourage and develop these critical skills in young professionals. By honing these capabilities in more professionals we are doing our part to minimize the skills shortage.”

Every year, Trend Micro hosts around 20 CTFs around the globe, as well as 10 contests in association with the Organization of American States, which are specific to women across Latin America. It operates several initiatives to support skills development and also recruits, trains new cybersecurity professionals in five global centers namely the United States, Canada, Brazil, Czech Republic and Egypt. After training program, they receive job offers from strategic partners, customers and also from Trend Micro. In overall, Trend Micro supports the development of more than 2,500 new cybersecurity professionals by 2022, to counteract the 1.8 million skills shortage projected by Frost & Sullivan, a business consulting firm involved in market research.

Commenting on this, Mark Liggett, Senior Security Analyst, Tulane University, says, “The demand for qualified professionals is the most consistent security concern we hear across our industry and our connections across the region. Trend Micro is one of very few global companies that is actively working to help change this. Equipping new professionals from all walks of life is key to helping more businesses effectively manage their security stack and mitigate the risk of attack. The importance of a unified platform to both assess security risks and remediate them cannot be overstated. Trend Micro excels with the depth and breadth of their offerings and connection to the security community.”

This year’s CTF will comprise of two rounds, an online qualifier and the finals. The online qualifier will take place on 15^th -16^th September which will include Jeopardy style questions that challenge teams to solve various security problems quickly. The top teams will then qualify for the finals at Tokyo, Japan on 15^th – 16^th December. Winners will receive ¥1,000,000 (equivalent to $9,000) along with 15,000 Zero Day Initiative Rewards Program points per player. Second and third place team will receive ¥300,000 ($3000) and ¥200,000 ($2,000) respectively.

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