SANS 2022 Holiday Hack Challenge, the year’s most anticipated cybersecurity tradition, opens to players of all skill levels
Protect The North Pole from threats and earn your place on Santa Claus Nice list – Join Santa at KringleCon, a virtual conference with cybersecurity experts
BETHESDA, Md., 8 December 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The SANS Institute (SANS) has officially opened its 21st Annual Holiday Hack Challenge! Participants can join Santa to save the holiday season from betrayal by recovering five precious rings, each ring representing a different mission to defeat cybersecurity obstacles and change the course of the future. This free, hands-on cybersecurity challenge is open to all skill levels and ages, where players will have their skills tested by a holiday supervillain with the potential to win prizes ranging from cybersecurity goodies to the grand prize of a free SANS online training course.
SANS 2022 Holiday Hack Challenge, the year’s most anticipated cybersecurity tradition, opens to players of all skill levels
“We are thrilled to present another year of the SANS Holiday Hack Challenge,” said Ed Skoudis, president of SANS Technology Institute college and SANS Chief Holiday Officer. “We’ve been saving the holidays with the cybersecurity community since 2002, and this year we hope even more players will join the fray in this playful way to advance critical skills and cyber capabilities around the world.”
More than 17,000 players participated in 2021, and this year’s Holiday Hack Challenge is expected to reach even more cybersecurity professionals and students. The virtual co-op game allows players to create custom avatars and team up with teammates, friends and players around the world in this unique shared virtual experience to explore The North Pole while advancing their cybersecurity skills across cloud security, forensics, offensive and defensive security, and more.
“Our cyber security elves saved the season last year, protecting Santa and his family The North Pole from danger, and we thought all the holidays would be safe for years to come,” Skoudis said. “We’ve discovered that evil still lurks above the icy terrain, so we need to call on our cybersecurity community, from K-12 students to seasoned professionals, to be join us in this mission to save the holidays again!”
The Holiday Hack Challenge takes place in conjunction with KringleCon 2022, a virtual conference hosted at The North Pole, featuring a series of fascinating talks from cybersecurity experts discussing the latest information security topics. Some talks will also include hints to help players build skills to solve this year’s Holiday Hack challenges. Both events take place from December to the beginning of January.
Santa is counting on you, so click here to learn more about the 2022 SANS Holiday Hack Challenge and KringleCon.
About SANS Institute
The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a collaborative research and educational organisation. Today, SANS is the most trusted and, arguably, the largest provider of cybersecurity training and certification to professionals in public and commercial institutions worldwide. Recognized SANS instructors teach more than 60 courses at in-person and virtual cybersecurity events and on demand. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, validates practitioner skills through more than 35 hands-on technical certifications in cybersecurity. SANS Technology Institute, a regionally accredited independent subsidiary, offers master’s and bachelor’s degrees, graduate certificates and a bachelor’s certificate in cybersecurity. SANS Security Awareness, a division of SANS, provides organizations with a complete and comprehensive security awareness solution, enabling them to manage their ‘human’ cyber security risks easily and effectively. SANS also provides a wide variety of free resources to the InfoSec community, including consensus projects, research reports, webcasts, podcasts, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet’s early warning system – the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners representing various global organizations, from corporations to universities, working together to support and educate the global information security community. www.sans.org
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SOURCE SANS Institute
