National CERT Launched Pakistan-Made Cybersecurity Training Platform to Teach Ethical Hacking and More
Muhammad Naeem:
Islamabad:Pakistan’s National Cyber Emergency Response Team (National CERT) has introduced “CTF Square,” a locally developed cybersecurity platform aimed at enhancing digital security training, technical assessments, and hands-on cyber skills development nationwide.
The initiative is part of National CERT’s broader efforts to improve cyber resilience and build local cybersecurity capacity through hands-on technical training and simulation-based exercises.
According to National CERT, the platform provides a structured environment where students, cybersecurity professionals, researchers, and technology enthusiasts can practice and improve their skills through real-world cybersecurity challenges.
The organization said the platform is being continuously updated with challenges covering multiple areas, including web security, cryptography, digital forensics, reverse engineering, cloud security, and network defense.
National CERT has also invited academia, industry experts, and independent researchers to contribute high-quality challenges to the platform. Contributors will receive official recognition for their work.
Unlike traditional cybersecurity training platforms that mainly depend on virtual machine-based labs, CTF Square uses a lightweight and script-driven deployment model aimed at reducing infrastructure requirements and improving accessibility.
The platform allows users to run cybersecurity labs directly on their local systems without needing resource-intensive virtual environments. National CERT said the system combines dependencies, configurations, and execution logic into automated scripts, reducing system overhead while improving setup speed and usability for learners and event organizers.
