Introduction

Together with KMCC (Kent & Medway Cyber Cluster) and KMCS3 (Kent & Medway Cyber Security Student Society), iCSS is co-organising a CyberAnything Competition. The competition started in late September 2023, and KMCC joined the initiative as a co-organiser and a co-sponsor in late December, 2023.

We increasingly rely upon digital, networked and smart technologies such as mobile devices and the internet to live our lives. Or we can say that we are living in the Internet of Everything (IoE), a cyber-physical world where so many hardware devices, software systems, physical things, systems and people are now interconnected. However, the cyber elements of our lives and how security, privacy and safety of such elements affect our lives are not always visible or overlooked, and sometimes intentionally concealed. They are often so entrenched in our way of being that we overlook our reliance upon them until they stop functioning, e.g., when a power cut, server downtime or an empty battery hits us.

This competition welcomes anything that is cyber-related in our daily lives. You can use your camera or other image-capturing device to capture a moment as a photo or a short video, or create a drawing, or prepare an infographic such as a flyer or a PowerPoint slide, or write an essay or even a poem, or make a 3-D printed object or a hand-crafted artefact, etc., which can tell a story about living, learning and connecting in the cyber or cyber-physical world in the past, at present, and/or in the future. You are also welcome to try generative AI for creating your submission, but in this case please describe which generative AI tool(s) were used and how you used it/them, e.g., prompt(s) you used to create the submission.

Cash prizes

Submitted artefacts will be judged anonymously by a judging panel for the following prizes in the following four categories: 1) current staff of the University of Kent, 2) current students of the University of Kent, 3) alumni of the University of Kent, and 4) other UK residents who have never been affiliated with the University of Kent. The cash prizes will be jointly sponsored by iCSS and KMCC. More cash prizes are available for sub-competitions and more may be added for the main competition.

• 4 Best Overall Prizes (one per category, £80 Amazon e-voucher per prize),
• 4 Most Creative Prizes (one per category, £80 Amazon e-voucher per prize), and
• 8 Runner-Up Prizes (two per category; £20 Amazon e-voucher per prize).

Eligibility

Please note that this competition is designed for current staff/students and alumni of the University of Kent, and UK residents only. If you are/were not affiliated with the University of Kent, you will be asked to confirm that you are a UK resident to be eligible for the competition. In addition, you must be 13 years old or above so that you can legally provide your own consent according to the UK data protection law (UK GDPR).

How to submit and by when

The deadline for submission is Wednesday 6 March 2024 23:59pm (extended). We plan to announce the prize winners in late March 2024.

To submit, please click or scan the following QR code.

Tips, inspirations and how to contact us

To help you think about cyber security related scenarios, please watch the following animated video iCSS produced recently:

A similar Cyber Security Photo Competition was organised by iCSS in 2022. See the results of the 2022 competition to get some inspirations on winning photos.

If you have any questions or queries or want to submit physical objects, please contact us via cyber-competition@kent.ac.uk.

Sub-competitions and sponsors

We encourage more people and organisations to contact us via cyber-competition@kent.ac.uk for sub-competitions for other categories of people or special topics. We are also interested in sponsors who can fund more cash prizes of the main competition and sub-competitions.

One sub-competition has been active:

• The History of Anything Cyber Competition co-organised by the History Society and the Kent Classics and Archaeology Society (KCAS) of Kent Union (University of Kent’s student union).

A flyer

See below for a flyer of this competition (click it to download a high-resolution PDF file). Please feel free to use it in whatsoever ways you see fit to let more know about and participate in the competition!