Young Persons Encouraged to Register for JDF Codesprint-Cyberthon

Young persons are being encouraged to register for the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) CodeSprint-Cyberthon, to be held on Friday (October 20).

The event, which is being staged as part of Cyber Awareness Month, aims to empower young people to know more about cyber threats.

Officer Commanding the Institute of Cyber Science at the Caribbean Military Academy at the JDF, Major Moniphia Hewling, told JIS News that the Cyberthon promises to deliver.

“It will be filled with fun cyber activities and competitions. It’s a heightened version of a hackathon, where the participants are given a theme and they identify issues within those themes and come up with tech-based solutions,” she outlined.

At the end of the day, persons will pitch those solutions to a team of judges and the group with the highest scores will be declared the winner.

“There will be lots of prizes and surprises; and also, on the day, we’ll have presentations, we’ll have… different types of demos from different tech companies and government entities,” Major Hewling pointed out.

They will also have a Code Sprint, which is described as a Capture the Flag competition.

“Persons will be presented with cyber scenarios, and they go in to provide solutions for these. When they provide the appropriate solution, they get what is called a flag. They submit this flag which has different values. At the end of the day, the team accumulating, not necessarily the most flags, but the flags with the most points, will be the winner,” Major Hewling said.

The event is targeting persons between 17 and 26 years, which she describes as the information technology-based generation.

To register for the event as a participant, persons can visit the JDF website at: jdfweb.com.

“They can go to that site, there’s a link and it takes you to the registration forms if you want to participate as a group in any of the two competitions,” the Major informed.

She said the JDF decided to stage the event given the cyber security threats surfacing in recent years.

“This society is being faced with a number of cyber-attacks. Persons really need to be aware as they are being targeted and defrauded. Persons are also making themselves vulnerable to these cyber-attacks and given that the JDF is in security, it is one of our domains,” she explained.

To attend as a spectator, persons can email the JDF at cyberthon@jdf.mil.jm.

“We will send them a pass to come through the gate. The gate that will facilitate this event is not the Cannonball Gate, but the cotton tree gate which is the old entry to Up Park Camp,” Major Hewling said.

The event will begin at 7:00 a.m. and end at 6:00 p.m. at the 10th Battalion Multipurpose Building, Up Park Camp.