Evolving Security Experts Among Teenagers

Presented at Black Hat Europe 2018, Dec. 6, 2018, 11:15 a.m. (50 minutes).

By 2020, the estimated shortfall in the security workforce will reach 1.5 million people (https://bit.ly/2GO6Ov0). Moreover, in today's world, there are so many security challenges facing us due to the evolving computers era, startups, and large companies needing talented employees. Thus, we are lacking both in quality and quantity. Additionally, these people are harder to recruit and maintain. The utopia is finding those that work hard, are innovative, creative and keep on learning. Sound like a tough mission to find. So how can we create them?

If we could only teach teenagers technical computer skills like (but not limited): networking, operating systems internals, programming languages, and the security implications of writing vulnerable code. If we could only afterward let them solve CTFs, and then mentor other teenagers about the same things they have just learned and, based on that, think about new ways to protect/attack our systems. Only then, we could really create the next generation of those talented people that the industry so eager to find.

In this talk, we will present a new approach to education in the field of cybersecurity, and demonstrate it by using a case in Israel. We will explain in detail how to build a framework (leveraging different pedagogical paradigms) of programs and groups, with the support of government, industry, and community, all for the sole purpose of creating a new generation of experts inventing the next big thing.


Presenters:

  • Nahman Khayet - Security Researcher, Rezilion
    Nahman Khayet is a Security Researcher at Rezilion and the founder of noxale, a security group consists only of teenagers. Prior to Rezilion, he was a Security Researcher at Aqua Security and PayPal. At noxale, Nahman lead a group of 50 skilled teenagers during the creation and participation in CTFs, Security conferences, and lectures. Nahman, aged 18 years old, is a student in high school as well as in "Magshimim" - the national cyber education program in Israel.
  • Shlomi Boutnaru - CTO, Rezilion
    Shlomi brings with him almost two decades of cybersecurity expertise and is currently the CTO of Rezilion. As the former CTO & Co-Founder of CyActive, he managed the development of the company's core technology and research in various topics such as malware analysis, network security, and IOT security. Prior to that, he led the Center of Excellence Cyber & Security in one of the largest IT providers in Israel. In addition a high respected lecturer on information security in leading institutes in Israel and abroad, and has a B.Sc. in Computer Science with emphasis on Network Security and Operating System Security, an M.Sc. in education and cybersecurity, currently a Ph.D. candidate at TAU.

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