"picoCTF Aims to Close the Cybersecurity Talent Gap"

The annual online hacking competition picoCTF was founded in 2013 by the Carnegie Mellon University CyLab Security and Privacy Institute. It aims to introduce cybersecurity to the future workforce. The competition offers a gamified way for college, high school, and middle school students to practice and demonstrate their cyber abilities. With over 18,000 competitors in 2022, picoCTF has evolved significantly since its launch, becoming the world's largest student-focused hacking competition. However, organizers determined that holding the annual event alone is not enough to fulfill the goal of closing the cybersecurity talent gap. Therefore, picoCTF expanded, creating a free, year-round learning platform where anybody, not only students, can learn and develop cybersecurity skills. According to CyLab, picoCTF provides learning guides and produces a monthly lecture series on YouTube to explain cybersecurity concepts such as cryptography, web exploitation, forensics, binary exploitation, and reversing. The picoGym allows participants to practice what they have learned by providing access to both new challenges and past challenges from picoCTF competitions. In addition, picoCTF and the National Security Agency (NSA) are collaborating to offer the first-ever picoCTF for GenCyber Teachers program. The camp, designed for 10th through 12th-grade high school teachers and district technology officers, will launch this summer. It will provide teachers with advice and resources for incorporating online Capture-The-Flag (CTF) problems and competitions into the classroom, with the goal of generating interest in cybersecurity careers. This article continues to discuss picoCTF's efforts to address the cybersecurity talent gap. 

CyLab reports "picoCTF Aims to Close the Cybersecurity Talent Gap"