Unlock seamless CTF coordination and execution with Enhanced Event Management

Ensuring a thrilling Capture The Flag (CTF) event experience requires meticulous planning and project management skills. During this process, it’s critical to ensure that your members have a rewarding experience that aligns with your organization's objectives and vision. 

A tailored approach for each event effectively addresses a range of security roles, evaluates your team's performance and skills in response to emerging threats, and promotes ongoing skill development. 

With the latest release of Enhanced Event Management features, we've compiled a valuable set of insights for creating a successful event by harnessing the full potential of member and event management features through the HTB CTF Platform. 

What is Enhanced Event Management?

Enhanced Event Management is a significant addition to the existing features and customizations available in the HTB CTF platform, designed to streamline the setup and coordination of Capture The Flag events through:

• Member onboarding and organizational management.

• Automated invitations and role assignments.

• Challenge management for configurable events.

• Content categorization and filtering.

This set of features, in combination with existing configurable event settings within the CTF platform, can be used to your advantage when planning an event. Simply follow the necessary steps and best practices below.

Identifying your event objectives

A CTF event should be engaging, align with your team's objectives, and be enjoyable for the players. Consider what you aim to achieve, whether it's enhancing team collaboration, or benchmarking members’ and teams' skills. 

Most importantly, set measurable goals and metrics covering all parameters. These take the form of:

• Expected vs. actual participation.

• Percentage of Challenges solved by teams.

• Variety of skill sets among individuals within teams.

• Average time-to-solve Challenges.

• Player’s feedback and impressions.

Though CTFs are traditionally recognized as competitions, this does not limit you from utilizing Challenges and your event’s parameters to benchmark particular skills and gain valuable insights. These insights may prove helpful in constructing a comprehensive workforce development plan. 

Using a CTF for gap analysis is a perfect way to identify key skills gaps while fostering a culture of upskilling within your team and organization.

 

Outline event parameters

Determine the event’s duration, level of difficulty, and the ideal number of Challenges to match the players' skills and maintain high levels of engagement. 

These event parameters will guide you in using the Enhanced Event Management features to delegate responsibilities and include relevant Challenges in your event.

Distributing responsibilities through Member Management

The Member Management feature allows you to organize your event and invite members of your organization efficiently. It supports easy onboarding through role assignments and ensures members focus on their specific responsibilities for a successful event.

Role assignment is not limited to the event itself. Member Management allows you to provide standard roles within your CTF team, ensuring streamlined planning for recurring events. 

In addition to higher responsibilities, your teams and players can be onboarded as members of your organization to have instant access to your upcoming and future events.

The roles to distribute are as follows:

1. Admin: Manages member event setup and event credits purchase.

2. Event Manager: Oversees event setup and participant involvement.

3. Event Coordinator:  Manages event details and promotion.

4. Member: Participates in events as a player.

Select your ideal event pack

Utilize our CTF Marketplace to get started. You will find an extensive library of curated content to quickly set up and deploy events without requiring technical knowledge. 

One key benefit of CTF Marketplace is the ability to preview and select from diverse curated CTF packs. These packs are designed to cater to teams of various sizes, levels of expertise, and specific interests, while you maintain the ability to add and remove Challenges within your pack. 

In addition to the wide range of packs available, you can always select “Tailor your CTF Event.” This allows you to create a CTF event from scratch by using the library of Challenges available.

EXPLORE CTF MARKETPLACE

Configuring your event Challenges

One of the most valuable features of Enhanced Event Management is the ability to configure Challenges based on your event parameters. 

Whether you have selected a pack or are crafting your own event, you can add and remove more than 80 Challenges, covering a diverse range of skills and areas within both offensive and defensive domains.

Upon selection, you can find categorized information on each Challenge, including its objectives, categories, average solving time, and difficulty levels. 

This helps you modify your list to match the skill level and thematic goals of your event. You can also view content previously used in events to make informed Challenge selection based on your audience.

 

Managing your event details

Early before your launch date, have your Event Coordinator personalize your event with a banner, description, and your company’s logo to generate excitement and let participants know what to expect. Think about what is most relevant for them to know before getting started. 

Inform team members about the purpose of your next event and collaborate with other functions of your organization (e.g., marketing, and design) to create a landing page that you can publicly share within the CTF platform. Consider adding a prize pool to further incentivize engagement.

Managing your event settings

Event settings play a significant role in formulating the nature and character of your CTF event with just a few toggles. 

Consider your planned event vision and objectives, whether your event will focus on individual achievements or team collaboration, the importance of competition, and how these settings will impact participant engagement.

Additionally, consider enabling certificates of completion. Certificates offer tangible proof of participants' dedication to skill development and problem-solving and foster a sense of achievement and motivation. This can be particularly useful in open CTF events, as it can further promote your organization's upskilling culture.

Finally, to add a competitive edge for teams, a leaderboard can be toggled before and during your event to give teams an extra push to first place. In some cases, you may consider removing the leaderboard to allow teams and individuals to focus on personal pace and achievement.

Similarly, you can provide a more thrilling experience where users don’t know their final rank until hours before the event ends, boosting anticipation for a post-event rewards ceremony.

You are ready to go live!

It’s now time to start utilizing the Participants tab to monitor and edit individual and team sign-ups until the event's start date.

Measuring your event’s success

Gather feedback post-event to assess how well the Challenges and settings aligned with participant skills and how enjoyable the event was. Along with qualitative feedback, remember to look at the numbers. 

Analyze CTF reports to identify improvement areas for your next event and key areas where you can refine your upskilling strategy. 

By performing gap analysis based on continuous CTF events, you enable your organization to align with industry standards, optimize resource allocation, and enhance incident response preparedness. 

More specifically, through an initial CTF event, you can identify the difference or lack between your team’s current capabilities and the desired skill level to design and adjust your workforce development plan. 

Following your first benchmark CTF, you can streamline continuous events every quarter. Recurring events will help you measure your team’s progress and adjust your strategy accordingly while cultivating teamwork and enthusiasm.

We had a bunch of ideas of what to do next so we can get more people involved and experience learning. We felt a Hack The Box CTF would be a good place to start for everyone to get to know each other and spend time together in one day with activities, presentations, and key speakers, which was really well received. When people were solving Challenges, they were looking around and talking to each other. We were getting close to breaking down those barriers before, but this is what really solved it. 

Mihai Muresan, Cyber Security Specialist at E.ON

Mapping the setup process

Now that we have gone through all the necessary phases, here’s a mapped process of all the necessary steps for you to leverage all best practices and Enhanced Event Management features to create engaging and insightful CTF events.

Ready to host your next CTF competition?

Jump into the CTF Marketplace and save time setting up an event that aligns with your business objectives.

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If your organization doesn’t have access to CTF events, contact us to integrate Capture The Flag events as regular assessments in your cybersecurity workforce development plan.