Advancing India’s cyber-preparedness, KAVACH-2023, a national level hackathon was launched today to identify innovative ideas and technological solutions for addressing the cyber security and cybercrime challenges of the 21st century.

While addressing media, Dr. T G Sitharam, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), said that KAVACH-2023 is a unique kind of national hackathon jointly conducted by MoE’s Innovation Cell, AICTE, Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D, MHA) and Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C, MHA) to identify innovative ideas and technological solutions for addressing the cyber security and cybercrime challenges of the 21st century faced by our Law Enforcement Agencies and common citizens.

Speaking the occasion Shri Balaji Srivastava, IPS, Director General, Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D), said that it will be a 36-hours long event, during which youth from educational institutions across the country and registered start-ups will participate to find robust, secure and effective technological solutions for cyber security by using their technical expertise & innovative skills. It will advance the blockage of cyber security crimes with a robust system monitoring and safety provisions, he added.

Shri Abhay Jere, Vice Chairman, AICTE, informed that KAVACH-2023 will be conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the problem statements, grouped into various buckets such as Fake News/social media, Dark web, Women safety, Phishing Detection, Video analytics/CCTV, Obscene Content Detection, Spam Alert, and Malware Analysis/Digital Forensics shall be posed to the public. Willing participants are expected to develop digital solutions for the statements using robust technologies like Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality, etc. and submit their concepts on the portal of Kavach-2023, he added.

Shri Rajesh Kumar, IPS, CEO, Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) during the launch of this Hackathon stated the importance of this Hackathon given the age of digital crimes. He said that the Grand finale of KAVACH-2023 will be a 36-hours long mega event, during which selected youths from educational institutions across the country and registered start-ups will participate to find robust, secure and effective technological solutions using their knowledge, technical expertise and innovative skills. Total prize money worth Rs. 20 Lakh will be awarded to the winning teams, he added.

Smt. Rekha Lohani, IPS, Director, MoD informed that the concepts so submitted by participants will be evaluated by a group of domain experts and the most innovative ideas will be selected during the second phase which shall culminate with Grand Finale, selected participants will be expected to demonstrate their solutions for ascertaining technical feasibility and implementability of their solutions. Best ideas will be declared winners by the jury.

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NB/AK