New Delhi: The National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has launched CYBER KUSHTI 2026, a nationwide cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI) hackathon aimed at evaluating participants’ ability to exercise human judgment in cybersecurity assessments rather than only identify vulnerabilities, it was announced on Sunday.

CYBER KUSHTI 2026 is the official parallel technical track of the 3rd National Conference on Cyber Security, Digital Forensics and Intelligence (NCCDFI 2026). It is being organised in collaboration with the Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC Foundation) under the National Security Database (NSD), with CERT-In as the knowledge partner.

Registration opened on August 15 and will continue until September 10. Participation is free and open to students and independent researchers competing in teams of three.

Unlike conventional contests that focus mainly on vulnerability hunting or Capture The Flag (CTF) challenges, the competition is designed to assess how participants evaluate and prioritise security risks. Organisers said it reflects the growing need for professionals who can distinguish genuine threats from false positives generated by automated systems.

All teams will receive the same deliberately imperfect Security Assessment Package. The package will include AI-generated findings, source code, application logs, architecture documents, static analysis reports, dependency scans and secrets scans. False, duplicated and genuine findings have been intentionally mixed in, and some real vulnerabilities omitted, to test analytical ability, the ministry said.

Teams must produce a corrected and prioritised security assessment and explain and defend their decisions. Participants will be rewarded not only for identifying real security issues but also for correctly dismissing inaccurate findings.

Speaking at the launch, Prof. Tripathi said the cybersecurity landscape has evolved from merely finding issues to determining which findings are most critical and require immediate attention. He noted that while machines can generate security findings at scale, human judgment remains essential in verifying their accuracy and prioritising responses.

The initiative positions analytical judgment and prioritisation as central skills alongside technical detection in the training of the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.