NIELIT launches ‘CYBER KUSHTI 2026’ to test human judgment in cybersecurity assessments

New Delhi, Aug 16 (IANS) The National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has launched CYBER KUSHTI 2026, a nationwide cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence (AI) hackathon aimed at evaluating participants’ ability to exercise human judgment in cybersecurity assessments rather than simply identify vulnerabilities, it was announced on Sunday.

CYBER KUSHTI 2026 has been introduced as the official parallel technical track of the 3rd National Conference on Cyber Security, Digital Forensics and Intelligence (NCCDFI 2026).

The initiative is being organized in collaboration with the Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC Foundation) under the National Security Database (NSD), with CERT-In serving as the knowledge partner.

Registration for the competition opened on August 15 and will continue until September 10.

Participation is free of cost and open to students and independent researchers competing in teams of three.

Unlike conventional cybersecurity contests that focus primarily on vulnerability hunting or Capture The Flag (CTF) challenges, CYBER KUSHTI 2026 has been designed to assess how participants evaluate and prioritize security risks.

Organisers said the competition reflects the growing need for professionals who can distinguish genuine threats from false positives generated by automated systems.

Under the format, all teams will receive the same deliberately imperfect Security Assessment Package.

The package will include AI-generated findings, source code, application logs, architecture documents, static analysis reports, dependency scans and secrets scans.

Organisers have intentionally included false, duplicated and genuine findings, while omitting some real vulnerabilities to test participants’ analytical abilities, the Ministry of Electronics & IT said.

Teams will be required to produce a corrected and prioritized security assessment, explaining and defending their decisions.

Participants will be rewarded not only for identifying real security issues but also for correctly dismissing inaccurate findings, the report said.

Speaking at the launch, Prof. Tripathi said the cybersecurity landscape has evolved from merely finding issues to determining which findings are most critical and require immediate attention.

He noted that while machines can generate security findings at scale, human judgment remains essential in verifying their accuracy and prioritizing responses.

–IANS

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