Starting tomorrow, in Cambridge, more than 300 student hackers, programmers, and designers will put their creative and technical competence to the test over an exciting 24-hour period, developing projects that push the boundaries of technology—a new generation of talent that may change the landscape of things to come. 

Avast is proud to sponsor Hack Cambridge, an annual tradition organized by Cambridge University and one of the UK’s most prestigious and popular Hackathons. We’re especially looking forward to meeting talented individuals from around the globe looking for opportunities in cybersecurity, coding, machine learning, and other technical disciplines.

Over the last few years, an alarm has been ringing loud and clear: demand for cybersecurity talent in the workforce exceeds supply. By 2022, in fact, the gap between available qualified professionals and unfilled positions is expected to grow to 1.8 million. (Source: Frost & Sullivan – The 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study: Women in Cybersecurity) Couple that with the underrepresentation of women in the industry and we’re facing a worthy challenge: to ensure that cybersecurity is more appealing to women and other under represented groups—starting now. Academia and industry must share this responsibility.

As data breaches and ransomware make headline-breaking news around the globe nearly every day, it’s clear that cybersecurity organizations and the industry as a whole must play a critical role in the appointment, retention, development of, and promotion of new cybersecurity professionals—from all backgrounds. And we must all be committed to raising awareness and educating people and businesses on how to protect against security threats. Collaborating with higher education—combining the best academic thinking with the practical expertise of the industry—will not just advance threat detection and mitigation, but it will also train a new generation of cybersecurity talent eager to take on the challenge. We’re sincerely committed to partnering with institutions like Cambridge University to help students learn new skills and test their cybersecurity acumen.

Tomorrow (Saturday, January 20th) at 13:30 GMT in the Guild Hall at Cambridge University, Michal Salat, Director of Threat Intelligence at Avast, will be sharing with Hack Cambridge attendees the top cybersecurity threats of 2017 as well as revealing our predictions for 2018. He will also be inviting participants to join the Avast Hack Challenge—a Roman Legionnaire-themed competition that applies logical thinking, math, cryptology, tone dialing and PC knowledge. The winners will receive a DJI Spark Drone.

Hope to see you there!