Asia's Popular Infosec Conference Has The Unique Concept Of Simulated CTF

This Cyber Security Conference has a speaker's repository from the National Cyber Security Coordinator of the PM Office India to the intelligence officers from the US Homeland Security. With the rapid pace of digitisation, cybersecurity has become the need of the hour. We are achieving a great digital future that requires knowing and managing the adverse effects of digitalisation too. At the same time, most people co-relate cybersecurity with the fancy hacking world, but the reality & facts are poles apart. It is Asia's most popular cybersecurity & hacking events, the CIA Conference aka CIACON (www.ciaconference.com).

It aims to bridge the gap between corporate cybersecurity and the fancy world of hacking. CIACON is the only conference from South Asia to have speakers from US Homeland Security & US Army. CIACON is a series of the global conference on cyberspace where international leaders, policymakers, industry experts, think tanks, cyber wizards etc. gather to deliberate on issues and challenges for optimally using cyberspace, Forensic, Cyber Crime, cyber Terrorism, Malware, web application, networking, IoT & IT related laws. The conference consists of highly technical training, talks, workshops, exhibitions, networking parties & CTFs. The term CIA defines the CIA triad, a benchmark model in information security designed to govern and evaluate how an organisation handles data stored, transmitted, or processed.

Intrasquad Cyber Intelligence Pvt Ltd is a parent company of CIA Conference. The first edition of this conference was held in 2018 at Manav Rachna Campus, where the chief guest was Dr. Gulshan Rai, India's first National Cyber Security Coordinator for the office of the PMO India. The second edition of the conference, which happened virtually in 2020, had the world's top and most renowned speakers ranging from Intelligence Officers from US Homeland Security, US Army, Blackhat Hackers from Brazil to the Director of PCI DSS.

This conference has transposed the meaning of CTF, traditionally CTF is being held on the web application, but they innovated the most unique concept of Computer Simulated CTF. This CTF enables teams to come together on a virtual gaming platform in real-time, and thus, players can play the game by solving the challenges just by walking in a particular dedicated theme.

The idea has not only been appreciated by CTF players & security researchers but also by speakers of the conference. According to some bug bounty platforms, this CTF has been the most unique and interesting CTF to date.

The inspiration for CIA Conference (CIACON) came to the young computer science engineers Vaibhav Jha & Arjun Chaudhary. They first met at the Gurugram Police Summer Internship; Arjun was in the second year of his engineering at SRM, Delhi, while Vaibhav was the final year student at Manav Rachna International University, Faridabad.

The two got talking and realised a common passion for bringing the change in the mindset of people for Cyber Security & Hacking. Discussing new vulnerabilities and exploits were the passion of this duo. Their ideas collided, and they started building a platform where security researchers from all across the globe could come and share their findings. This security conference has a partnership with some most eminent security villages. Security Villages are the squad that demonstrate the live hacking on a particular subdomain of cybersecurity. Their pre-conference training & workshops are being held in collaboration with top security experts, who don't want to talk about Ethical Hacking or Cyber Security as a whole. They demonstrate and train on particular subdomains, e.g., IDS, SCADA, Forensics, SOC/SIEM, Exploit Development, Source Code analysis and much more.

Their motto is "Redefining The Drift Beyond Security", which portrays their uniqueness in imparting the knowledge to their delegates, which seems quite far beyond security. As in today's digital world, each technology needs security.

Their speaker's repository depicts that they have maintained the benchmark in selecting the speakers from various cybersecurity domains. Vaibhav Jha, one of the co-founders of the CIA Conference, is a public speaker and a security researcher. Recently he shared how one should get ready for the next cyber pandemic. Mr. Jha has expertise in wireless security, networking & IoT security. Recently he has been awarded the budding researcher award by IEEE at an International Conference in Dubai. Vaibhav has worked with the Ministry of Electronics & IT, Comptroller Auditor General of India, iCISA, and various state police departments.

Apart from this, he is a mentor of change under NITI Aayog. He has been recognised as the youngest Indian to train IAAS Officers, International Delegates which includes Cops, Intelligence Officers of more than 35 countries on Safeguarding Critical Security Infrastructure. Whereas Arjun Chaudhary, who is the other Co-Founder of the CIA Conference. Arjun Chaudhary is a security researcher & certified ethical hacker with a passion for finding bugs and flaws on bug bounty platforms.

He has helped secure dozens of gov. in domains, and his major areas of interest are web security and VAPT. Apart from this, he is leading the local chapter of OWASP in India. Recently they have announced their next edition of the conference in 2022 on their social media handles. They are planning to expand their operation in North America. Hopefully, the 2022 edition will take place in Canada. It is expected that the 2022 edition of CIACON will have speakers from DHS, the Canadian Government, Security experts from India/US/Canada, Interpol Officers & from many other intelligence units all across the globe