Welcome to the official kick-off for the SANReN Cyber Security Challenge (CSC) competition 2025!
The CSC competition is hosted annually and will be open to all students registered for tertiary studies in 2025 at eligible tertiary educational institutions. Participation in the CSC competition follows two rounds: Qualification and Finals.
The qualification round will be available from 1 April 2025 to 14 September 2025. There are no set dates for the qualification round; suitable dates are discussed and arranged with each lecturer individually to ensure the students from the respective institution can be accommodated. It should be noted that to be eligible to qualify for the final round, the teams from the respective institutions must participate during the qualification window.
For qualification, one of the following models can be followed:
- Course-Based, Voluntary: the CSC is presented to the students during one of their lectures (either in-person or virtual), and their participation is voluntary, and any eligible student team can register and compete during the qualification round.
- Course-Based, Compulsory: the CSC is presented to the students during one of their lectures (either in-person or virtual), and their participation is compulsory, the qualification round replaces/supplements/acts as a practical. The qualification round is marked by SANReN and the marks are forwarded to the corresponding lecturer.
- Open, Voluntary: students self-organise and compete during the qualification round.
At the conclusion of the qualification round (14 September 2025), the organisers will invite the top 10 teams to attend the CSC finals at the CHPC National Conference.
Please note: Only the top team (1) per university department can qualify for the CSC finals (a team from both the Computer Science and Engineering departments can be considered). The top team from the university department must still place in the top 10 overall (of all universities participating) in order to qualify for the CSC finals.
Local travel and accommodation for students and the mentor who qualify for the CSC finals will be fully sponsored by SANReN/NICIS and CSIR.
To find out who your University’s mentor is, please follow this link
To view the rules of the CSC 2025 competition and determine eligibility to participate, please follow this link
For training material, please follow this link
To register to partake in CSC2025 competition, select the Register tab