Thursday, March 26, 2015

CSIS Holding "Cyber DiploHack 2015" Hackathon

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is hosting its first ever cyber policy hackathon called Cyber DiploHack 2015 on March 26 and 27.  Here is more from CSIS:
Six teams drawn from universities in the United States and Europe will participate in an intensive, scenario-based policy hackathon to develop new approaches to cyber security and cyber capacity building. With facilitation from CSIS and outside experts, teams will apply creative ideation processes commonly used in technology design to solve a cybersecurity policy challenge. Cyber DiploHack will utilize cutting-edge technology to enhance collaboration between international teams, facilitators, and judges.
Created with the support of the Embassy of the Netherlands and the Dutch Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs, Cyber DiploHack 2015 will identify ways to bring principles into practice for cooperation and capacity building in cyberspace. Resulting concepts and ideas will serve as input for the Global Conference on Cyberspace (www.gccs2015.com), organized April 16-17 in The Hague.

More about the hackathon, including the agenda, can be found here.  And some pics of the hackathon (and preparations for it) can be found here and here and here.

Hackathons are not new to think tanks.  For example, earlier this year, the Israeli think tank Reut Institute held an anti-BDS hackathon.

CSIS was recently ranked as the world's top defense and national security think tank by the 2015 University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.