Online competition to find Sri Lanka’s most secure coder launched

By Zahara Zuhair
Targeting 5,000 individuals, CodeCraft, an online competition to find Sri Lanka’s most secure coder was launched in Colombo recently. The competition will be held under two categories which are for the corporate sector and the university students engaged in software development.
It is held aimed at supporting Sri Lankan government’s mission to earn US $ 5 billion foreign exchange from export of software development by 2020.
University Grant Commission Chairman Professor Mohan De Silva said that CodeCraft competition will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of existing security systems and will help to create innovative initiative methods for security coding. 
Therefore, he encouraged university students to take part in the competition and improve knowledge on secure software designing and programming. (Codes are assigned when storing data where it shortens the original data in an agreed manner between the users of the system).
CICRA Holdings Director/CEO Boshan Dayaratne said that during the competition, participants are provided with an online questionnaire based on their domain knowledge of secure programming and they will be tested on their ability to design secure programmess.
To register, the candidate will have to register online (www.codecraft.lk), thereafter make the required registration fee to any branch of the Bank of Ceylon (BoC), and once it’s verified with the bank, the candidate will be notified about the exam details.
It was noted that the winners in both categories, will be provided with the opportunity to attend the “Hacker Halted 2017’ Annual Conference of the EC-Council in United States.
Furthermore, students following a degree in software development are also encouraged to apply.
Meanwhile, it was noted that by next year they are looking forward to create a reality show to give more exposure to the software developers. 
It is organized by CICRA, a cyber security training and consultancy organisation and the Daily FT. It is endorsed by Ministry of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure, Ministry of Higher Education and Highways, University Grants Commission, ICT Agency of Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM).
Strategic partners of the competition are Microsoft, London Stock Exchange Group and Dialog Axiata and the official banker is the BoC. Wijeya Newspaper group supports the event as print media sponsor while Derana TV acts as electronic media sponsor.