●      There was an 8% spike in cybercrime in Asia Pacific Regions in 2021.

●      This program is aimed at developing freely accessible tools & resources for our Nation that are needed to defend against threats that can disrupt, destroy, or threaten the delivery of essential services

●      Globally, 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs are available

●      Plans to scale the programme to 100 colleges in two years including a curriculum to co-create cyber security technologies

WinZO, India’s largest social gaming and interactive entertainment technology platform, has announced the launch of its new cyber security challenge programme, Code Health and Security Evaluation (CHASE) – (WinZO CHASE) in partnership with Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D), Delhi Technological University (DTU), Netaji Subhash University of Technology (NSUT), and IIID. The programme aims to invest in and develop open-source technology and best practices that can be used by businesses, government agencies, and other organizations to protect against cyber actors who exploit vulnerabilities to steal information, and money, and are developing capabilities to disrupt, destroy, or threaten the delivery of essential services. As most solutions are now delivered in a digital environment, it becomes the most important vulnerability and National Security threat.

Through this program, WinZO along with the partnered institutes aims to develop open-source technologies for cyber security: information and event management, endpoint detection & response protocols, security orchestration, encryption, and penetration testing and detection technology. The first phase of the program would also be extending a scholarship of Rs.5 lacs to the winners. Top-performing participants are also eligible for internships and pre-placement interviews at WinZO.

WinZO has a 100 million registered user base and facilitates over four billion micro-transactions per month. In this biggest micro-transaction economy of the country, the safety of transacting users and the integrity of data is most important. Since its launch on 7^th April, WinZO has seen over 1000 registrations for the challenge and has already started receiving submissions.

Paavan Nanda, Co-founder of WinZO said: “We aspire to build world-class technology and solutions out of India and extend our solutions to the entire ecosystem to scale the impact, that is the role of any platform business. Preventing attacks or mitigating the spread of an attack as quickly as possible is of utmost importance for a platform that scales across over 100 million users, 20% of which are making their first digital payments. Any cyber-attack, no matter how small, is a threat to our national security and must be identified, managed, and shut down. Young engineers need to develop an early outlook for security threats and solutions that can help organizations stay ahead of emerging threats.”

Launched in early 2018, WinZO hosts over 100 skill-based games in 12 vernacular languages. It has a registered user base of over 100 million, of which around 90% hail from tier II and beyond. The company facilitates over four billion microtransactions and gameplays per month. In addition to the CHASE programme, WinZO actively engages the student community across various streams be it technology, business, design or security. Recently, the company wrapped up the second season of Battle of Super Scholars (BOSS) in IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, and IIM Lucknow that saw participation from more than 1,000 students across campuses.  WinZO also conducts a yearly hackathon across college campuses with the most relevant and modern problem statements to encourage the next generation of talent to build large scalable consumer technology companies made in India to solve for the world.

WinZO aims to scale its CHASE programme to 100 colleges in two years.

Link to WinZO CHASE – https://www.winzochase.com/