On April 21-23, 2025, the CyberDef-K18 student team from Khmelnytsky National University took part in the international cybersecurity competition “UA-EE Cyber Shield via Tallinn Mechanism (Eastern version)” held in Kyiv.
The competition was held as part of the Tallinn Mechanism initiative, aimed at strengthening Ukraine's cyber resilience, with the participation of 12 countries from Europe and North America, as well as observers from NATO and the EU. The event was organized by the National Cybersecurity Coordination Center of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, the Embassy of Estonia, EstDev, E-Governance Academy, and CybExer Technologies.
Twenty-five teams with over 140 participants took part in the competition, including representatives of law enforcement agencies and leading Ukrainian universities. The CyberDef-K18 team acted as the Blue Team, monitoring, analyzing threats, and responding to cyberattacks.
CyberDef-K18 successfully completed the planned exercises over the three days, scoring 6,032 points in the overall ranking.
It was an unprecedented experience for all team members, as the conditions of the exercises were as close to real-life conditions as possible, in particular, methods of countering a coordinated hacker attack directed against the IT infrastructure of an enterprise, security services, and critical infrastructure were practiced. It was an extremely valuable lesson for students, providing practical immersion in a near-real environment of active and passive countermeasures against cyberattacks.
