EC-Council Foundation Announces Innovative Child Online Protection Initiative at the World Summit of Information Security 2012

EC-Council Foundation Announces Innovative Child Online Protection Initiative at the World Summit of Information Security 2012
May 16, 2012 designer

Geneva, Switzerland – May 16, 2012

Jay Bavisi, the President of EC-Council Foundation, a 501c3 not-for-profit organization, announced a new online competition open to every country in the world with the goal of raising awareness of information security and online safety among teenagers and adults. The announcement of the competition, dubbed the �High School Challenge�, came today while Mr. Bavisi spoke on a high-level executive panel at the World Summit of Information Security 2012, organized by the International Telecommunication Union in cooperation with UNESCO, UNCTAD, and UNDP in Geneva.

Speaking alongside Mr. Bavisi, the high-level panel consisted of the Secretary General of ITU, Dr. Hamadoun Toure; Mohd Noor Amin, Chairman of the Management Board of IMPACT; H.E. Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim, Director of General Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of U.A.E.; Honorable M. Gilbert Noel Ouedraogo, Minister of Transport of Burkina Faso; H.E. Valery Borissov, Deputy Minister of Transport and Information Technologies; and Dr. Salim Alruzaiqi, Information Technology Authority, Communications CEO of Oman.

The new online competition format was created with the intent of incorporating teens and young adults into EC-Council Foundation’s existing and groundbreaking ethical hacking competition, The Global CyberLympics.

CyberLympics has been endorsed by the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT), which is the cyber security executing arm of the United Nations’ specialized agency, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), has officially been appointed as the Patron of the Global CyberLympics. With that appointment, Dr. Toure became the Chair of the Global CyberLympics Advisory Council (GCAC).

The Global CyberLympics is a not-for-profit initiative lead and organized by EC-Council Foundation with the goal of increasing education and ethics in information security through a series of cyber competitions that encompass forensics, ethical hacking, and defense. The “High School Challenge” is a key initiative for Global CyberLympics with the goal of fostering an environment that creates child online protection through education. The mission statement of the Global CyberLympics is “Unifying Global Cyber Defense through the Games” and last year, over 1,500 people applied to participate in the competition. The regional qualifying competitions were held at Cyber security conferences across the globe and the top two teams from each region were invited to participate in the World Finals. As travelling to the competition can prove costly and logistically complicated for children, the online “High School Challenge” will allow for great participation. As a Technology Sponsor of the games, the competitions will be powered by SAIC’s (SAIC) (NYSE: SAI) CyberNEXS(TM), a live, realistic game environment that has been used for well over 150 training and competition events globally, enabling users to develop the skills to recognize and defend against cyber attacks..

The CyberLympics World Finals is scheduled on the 29 -31 October, 2012 at the Hacker Halted Conference in Miami. For more information about CyberLympics or to register, please visit: https://www.cyberlympics.org

The International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (EC-Council) is a member-based organization that certifies individuals in various e-business and information security skills. It is the owner and creator of the world famous Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Computer Hacking Forensics Investigator (CHFI) and EC-Council Certified Security Analyst (ECSA)/License Penetration Tester (LPT) programs, and as well as many others programs, that are offered in over 87 countries through a training network of more than 450 training partners globally and has trained over 90,000 individuals and certified more than 40,000 security professionals.

The Foundation was set up as a not for profit initiative by the founders of EC-Council to raise awareness, build capacity across nations, and ultimately promote global peace while ensuring that the global community raises its awareness for the immediate need for child online protection. One of the key initiatives of the foundation is the Global CyberLympics; a unifying body for Global Cyber Defense. Global CyberLympics is a series of cybersecurity related competitions including: Forensics, Penetration Testing, Computer Network Defense, and Capture the Flag.

The Foundation also supports select regional, national, and international high school, collegiate and professional education programs and cyber competitions. The EC-Council Foundation mission is to foster collaboration and participation by Global Digital Citizens to become advocates for safe and secure on-line activities and child online protection.