News
SANS Stages Free Online CTFs and Expert Night Talks for Entire Information Security Community
March 2020 by Marc Jacob
SANS Institute is providing a series of free online cybersecurity activities open to all members of the information security community. This is the latest is a series of free offerings from SANS to help support cyber security professionals through the current Coronavirus outbreak.
Last week SANS released a free “Securely Working from Home” Deployment Kit and “Secure Your Kids Online” Resource Kit in response to the rapid transition to remote working and learning across the globe. Now SANS has put together an entirely free set of SANS@Mic evening talks, delivered by SANS’ expert instructors. Additionally, SANS is hosting a series of Mini Netwars (capture the flag) events to provide continuing learning and hands-on training for everyone in the community.
SANS Fellow, Ed Skoudis, explains, “SANS has always provided free resources to help the information security community. During these unprecedented times where, social distancing is the required norm and cyber attackers are increasing their activities, it is more important than ever to find ways of engaging and supporting our community. As a result, we have put together what we hope will be a really fun series of expert talks and Mini Netwars events that will run over the coming weeks and months. We are thankful for this community and are glad to be able to give something back.”
The SANS@Mic talks will run every Monday and Wednesday, twice a day for different time zones until at least June 2020 and will last approximately 60 minutes. Devised and delivered by a SANS panel of industry-expert instructors, the talks will cover the hottest cyber security topics and will be recorded and archived for those who missed them.
The Mini Netwars events will last up to three hours and will run every other week for the entire community. Mini Netwars Mission 1 will run 2-3 April and Mission 2 on 23-24 April. Missions 3 and 4 will follow. Each mission will feature brand new content and challenges from a wide range of cyber security skillsets, including offense, defense, analysis, and much more, all wrapped up in a whimsical theme. Additionally, on 16 April there will be a NetWars Capstone event, where participants will simulate a penetration test. All these events will run until 31 May and will be open to the public, not just SANS students.
Currently scheduled SANS@Mic talks can be found on the upcoming webcasts page. Additional information on the Mini Netwars can be found here https://www.sans.org/netwars-cybercast.
You can also visit https://www.sans.org/free to see all SANS free content available to the community.
