Founded in 2019 by world-renowned security researcher and trainer, Vivek Ramachandran, Pentester Academy houses the largest digital library of InfoSec courses in the world for online and offline led by world-class trainers and researchers. Cyberattacks have been on the rise in Singapore in recent years, with Uber’s 2016 data breach affecting 380,000 in Singapore, and a 2018 cyberattack on SingHealth that affected up to 1.5 million Singaporeans.
On 30 December 2019, discussions between Pentester Academy and NUS began, resulting in The Bug Bounty Crash Course. This was a 10-week programme opened to students and staff of NUS, for sign-ups between 8 May to 24 July 2020. This was the first time Pentester Academy had partnered with a university to conduct a live bootcamp exercise to empower students with practical knowledge to secure their school’s infrastructure and applications. The programme saw a successful sign up of over 200 participants, comprising both staff and students.
Vivek Ramachandran, CEO and Founder of Pentester Academy stated, “We are confident that this course will prepare the participants for the upcoming NUS Bug Bounty challenge and we look forward to contributing in upskilling Singapore’s cybersecurity talent pool.”
Ritesh Kumar, 2nd Year Computer Science Student, shares his experience, “Doing this course has been a life-changing experience. I felt the jack-of-all trades nature of cybersecurity, and pentesting is something I would really enjoy and will be pursuing in NUS.. Mr Vivek’s teaching style has reduced the learning curve greatly. Thanks to everyone who has made this possible! Really appreciate it and I hope to give back in some way.”
With the recent establishment of Singapore HQ, Pentester Academy has been aligning their efforts in bolstering the 4 pillars of Singapore’s Cybersecurity Strategy. Pentester Academy also believes that education and awareness are important steps inmaking Singapore more resilient, and raising our vigilance against cyberattacks.
“Pentester Academy is a wonderful resource for anyone who wants to learn ethical hacking in an easy to understand, structured and interesting manner.” Mentioned Goh Jin Siang, Associate Director (IT Security) of NUS. “The participants thoroughly enjoyed the 10 weeks bug bounty crash courses conducted by Vivek. They were treated to practical insights on how to hack and protect the system. Participants also get to reinforce the concepts they learnt through the labs, which can be completed at their convenient time, without hassle.”
This year, Pentester Academy also launched gamified labs for cybersecurity professionals. Using patent-pending technology to build state-of-the-art lab infrastructures that can be deployed completely automatically. This gives its customers unprecedented ability to run attack simulations against modern, real-world targets in the cloud, and figure out weaknesses attackers typically exploit. Pentester Academy believes that its practical training would provide Singapore security professionals with both fun and edifying experiences to make the internet safer.
