Estonian virtual Cyber Security hackathon unified participants from 14 countries to bring usable solutions to burning topics in just 48h
On the 23rd to 25th of October Garage48, Startup Estonia, the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu with several cyber security-related startups and organizations came together and poured their heart and soul into organizing and supporting the birth of a 4th Cyber Security Hackathon. The aim of the event was to grow, nourish and expand the cybersecurity community and to secure our cyberspace through solving various challenging problems by developing working prototypes within intensive weekend hackathon marathon.
All of the previous yearly hackathons of Cyber Security 2020 took place in a physical format. This year was an exception for health and safety reasons and it made the organizing team as well as participants adapt to a new format and a way to get things done. One of the best outcomes of having the event organized virtually is that it opened it up to a wider public. The event brought in close to 170 applications and 29 ideas got presented. From those, 18 ideas and teams were chosen to compete at the hackathon. Besides having the highest number of participants ever joining the Cyber Security hackathon, it also managed to go borderless and have participants brainstorming and working tirelessly from 14 countries – Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Belgium, USA, Ukraine, Denmark, India, Pakistan, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, UK and Afghanistan.
Peeter Marvet, a jury member, said it a press release:
“Having been mentored previously in the Cyber Security hackathons, I can say that this time the challenges that the teams tackled were much more relevant and solvable. I also believe that the online format gave them extra motivation and possibilities to work smarter and better, although they needed to adapt to so many technology platforms.”
Cyber Security Online Hackathon 2020 event partnered up with several startups and organizations, namely with Sentinel, Telia Eesti, Rangeforce, Tele2 Estonia, Startup Wise Guys, NjordLaw and others to offer participants mentoring, challenges to tackle during the event, and support them with prizes that would help them to take their idea to the next level.
Who won the hack?
The overall winner and winner of Sentinel challenge – Team Signed Tweets / Sureits.me, was a web app that let’s acclaimed and trusted individuals attach a signature to their tweet, so whenever someone reads their tweet, they can verify that it’s truly the individual who wrote it. This helps to avoid conflicts between social groups, or general panic.
The first runner up was Team SIM x GDPR, a tutorial game in English and Baltic languages that will have several versions of GDPR indecent simulations. Employees can play a new game each month and be regularly trained in GDPR awareness. The game will have a dashboard where an employer can see the process of each employee and can print the necessary reports in case data protection requests them to prove compliance.
The second runner up was Team Stardust, who made an app that preserves the user’s digital data profile aka all the personal data and a browser extension that automatically fills out a signup form using the data from the digital profile.
Read more about the hackathon and all of the winners at Garage48 homepage
