NYU-Poly's 6th Annual Cyber Security Challenges to Draw Hundreds of
Student Finalists, Corporate Security Chiefs and Cyber Celebrities to
Campus This Friday, Nov. 13

NEW YORK, Nov, 12 /PRNewswire/ -- With the clock ticking toward Friday, Nov. 13,
the country's top computer students are preparing to descend upon the Brooklyn
campus of Polytechnic Institute of New York University to compete in cyber
security challenges awarding cash and scholarships to the winners.



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A record number of students from the United States and Europe participated in
the 6th Annual Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) Challenges leading up to the
finals at NYU-Poly, home to a leading cyber security academic program. More than
100 of the best high school, undergraduate and graduate cyber-security and
digital forensics students will travel from as far as Hawaii and Utah to
challenge their peers in the final rounds.



The professionals will nearly match the number of students, as cyber security
chiefs of corporations, branches of the military and government agencies seek to
woo the next generation of digital geniuses who will protect digital networks
and fight cyber crime. Celebrity "white hat" hackers who guard networks helped
design the digital games, and many will serve as judges.



Keynote speaker for the awards ceremony that follows the games will be General
Electric's chief information security officer, Grady Summers. Summers is known
for embracing emerging technology and has pioneered the use of cloud storage and
security as a service to decrease GE's information risk.



The games are run by the graduate students of NYU-Poly's Information Systems and
Internet Security Lab, funded by the National Science Foundation and headed by
Professor Nasir Memon, a prominent cyber-security expert. When the games were
founded, the preliminary rounds spanned a week. Six years later, the preliminary
rounds span nearly all of October, which is National Cyber Security Month.



"The growth in the NYU-Poly CSAW games parallels the urgency of the issue of
cyber security," Memon said. "Security consultants SANS estimate that the United
States has only 1,000 world-class, technical cyber security professionals today,
and that we will need 20,000 to 30,000 within just a few years to protect our
networks."



Memon continued: "Meanwhile, police forensics departments tell us that virtually
every crime has some digital element and that their digital forensics labs
sometimes have years-long backlogs. Schools like NYU-Poly need to find and
educate students like these, who are capable of designing software that can cut
the backlog and become cyber-investigators themselves."



Although high school students have participated -- and even won -- challenges in
past years, this year marks the first in which a special forensics challenge was
developed for high school teams. More than 80 teams competed in the first round.
Nine high school teams will be among the finalists competing at NYU-Poly.



Other final rounds will be the Capture the Flag Application Security; the
Embedded Systems Challenge, in which students must defend their chips against
malicious modification during manufacturing; the Research Awards; the Quiz
Tournament, and the Security Awareness Poster Competition. The full list of
finalists can be viewed at http://www.poly.edu/csaw. Top prizes include
graduate-level scholarships to NYU-Poly, recognized as one of the leading
digital security schools in the world.



Memon thanked CSAW sponsors that provide the travel funds and prizes to make the
student-run competition possible. Sponsors are Assured Information Security,
AT&T, BAE Systems, the Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications at
NYU-Poly, Cisco, InterDigital, L-3 Communications, NIKSUN and SANS.



About Polytechnic Institute of New York University

Polytechnic Institute of New York University (formerly Polytechnic University),
an affiliate of New York University, is New York's most comprehensive school of
engineering, applied sciences, technology and research, and is rooted in
Polytechnic's 155-year tradition of invention, innovation and entrepreneurship
-- i-squared-e. The institution, founded in 1854, is one of the nation's oldest
private engineering schools. In addition to its main campus at MetroTech Center
in downtown Brooklyn, it offers programs at sites throughout the region and
around the globe. NYU-Poly has centers in Long Island, Manhattan and Westchester
County; globally, it has programs in Israel, China and will be an integral part
of NYU's campus in Abu Dhabi opening in autumn 2010. For more information, visit
www.poly.edu.



SOURCE Polytechnic Institute of New York University