The Final of the IV International Cyber Championship on Information Security Will Be Held at the CIPR

The final of the IV International Cyber Championship on Information Security will be held as part of the annual CIPR Conference scheduled for June 2-8, 2025. The competition will bring together over 100 top Russian and foreign cyber defenders. The cyber competition is supported by the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation and Solar Group, with Kaspersky Lab serving as the technology partner.

The International Cyber Championship in the Defence Challenge format is one of the largest information security tournaments matching eSports competitions in terms of spectacle and intensity.

The tournament has already become an annual event as part of the business program of the largest business events in Russia. Since 2022, it has been held during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and since 2024, the CIPR Conference has become its main venue.

While only 9 teams from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus participated in the 2022 tournament, the 2024 Cyber Championship organizers received over 180 applications. Following qualifiers, 40 teams from 18 countries were admitted to the competition: Russia, CIS countries, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America – with only five reaching the finals.

“From 2022 to 2024, we have observed twentyfold growth in the number of participants in the International Cyber Championship on Information Security. This project involves not only Russian teams, but also information security specialists from the CIS countries and friendly states in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Thus, the Cyber Championship is becoming a platform for exchanging knowledge and solving common information security problems – improving the skills and developing the talents of cyber defenders,” commented Alexander Shoytov, Deputy Minister of Digital Development of the Russian Federation.

The Cyber Championship participants practice cyber defense skills against the most relevant tactics of cyber threats, which Solar Group aggregates and analyzes daily while protecting over 1,000 major Russian companies. Furthermore, the company has data coming from sensors and honeypots deployed on Russia’s largest Rostelecom telecommunications network. This frontline expertise forms the foundation for all cyber exercises and cyber championships supported by Solar.

Real-life incidents: such as infrastructure malware infection via phishing links, social engineering, including using AI, are reflected in the Cyber Championship scenario, and their concept is regularly updated subject to relevant Russian and international cyber exercise practices. In 2025, the qualifying stage in the Jeopardy CTF format will be held consistently for each group of Russian and foreign participants across time zones. Teams will complete about 20 tasks of varying difficulty levels: vulnerability discovery and exploitation in compiled and web applications, OSINT, forensics, reverse engineering, cryptography, and steganography. The organizers will award points proportionally to the task complexity: the higher the complexity, the higher the score. Three top-scoring teams from each group will advance to the final.

The CIPR-2025 final will be held in the Defence Challenge format. Each blue team will be allocated an infrastructure segment on Solar cyber range with basic information security tools, and Kaspersky Lab will provide the Kaspersky Unified Monitoring and Analysis Platform. Professional red team will oppose each blue team. The winner of the Cyber Championship will be the team scoring highest for effective infrastructure protection.

“International cybersecurity competitions forge connections between people from different countries who share the common language of cybersecurity. By exchanging experience and competencies in protecting corporate infrastructure and government services, we develop interaction, mutually increase the level of knowledge and relations between the Russian and foreign information security communities. Our qualifying and final stages incorporate current cyberattack tactics and incident response and investigation tasks that Russian cyber defenders face daily, so we anticipate intense competition for first place,” commented Igor Lyapunov, General Director of Solar Group.

Technological partners of the cyber competition, Solar Group and Kaspersky Lab, will provide the Solar CyberMir platform based on the SolarQuest game engine and the KUMA SIEM system for the competition.

“The International Cyber Championship gathers the strongest cybersecurity specialists. They demonstrate a high level of professionalism, quick response and resourcefulness, and we traditionally provide them with international-level solutions that will help counter current cyber threats in corporate and industrial environments. Kaspersky Lab’s SIEM system has already proven its effectiveness in practice in many organizations, and now competition participants will be able to use its capabilities in this cyber battle,” commented Anna Kulashova, Kaspersky Lab Vice President for Business Development in Russia and CIS Countries.

The CyberMir platform has been used to organize the largest international cyber championships since 2022, annually engaging over 200 participants from Russia, CIS, and Southeast Asia.

Solar Group is a comprehensive cybersecurity architect specializing in information security outsourcing, development of proprietary products, integration of comprehensive solutions, training of information security specialists, analytics and research of cyber incidents.

Kaspersky Lab is an international company operating in information security and digital privacy since 1997. The company has protected over 1 billion devices from mass cyber threats and targeted attacks, and its accumulated knowledge and experience are consistently transformed into innovative solutions and services for protecting businesses, critical infrastructure, government agencies, and ordinary users around the world.