Envisioning the mainstreaming and democratizing of Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) space in India, to realize the dream of the Atmanirbhar Bharat of the Hon’ble Prime Minister and bring in young talent on an annual basis for nation building/ protection - the National Critical Information Infrastructure Centre (NCIIPC) partnered with All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) to conceptualize and conduct the NCIIPC AICTE PENTATHON 2024 - India’s first national level VAPT challenge for students.
The objective of this challenge was to create a talented pool of ethical hackers/ Pentesters amongst young budding students for finding vulnerabilities in the systems of critical information infrastructure. Once vetted for credibility and skill, in coordination with CII management these ethical hackers would be given the opportunity to conduct VAPT exercises at CII entities. Pentathon 2024 opened up the opportunity for all technical colleges and universities in India to participate in a challenge specially designed to resemble and mimic VAPT at real world Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) entities.
Students undertaking this challenge had to solve challenging tasks that the real VAPT professionals were likely to encounter on site at CII entities. The students undertook a gamified version of the VAPT challenges. They were tested on a broad range of challenges of varying levels of design and difficulty. This allowed students of all range of abilities and experiences to participate and engage. Their engagement intensified in the lead up to the competition as day long Ethical Hacking and Cybersecurity Workshops were conducted by NCIIPC experts in 6 cities of Ahmedabad, Pune, Chennai, Mysore, Hyderabad and Kolkata.
While 3 top teams and 3 individuals were awarded with prize money, exceptional top teams and individuals have been shortlisted for the pool of ethical hackers who will undertake VAPT at CII entities under NCIIPC’s crowdsourcing for ethical hackers program.
