Permissioned Blockchain Configuration Could Help Eliminate Threat Of Hackers In Digital Voting, Propose Winners Of Kaspersky Lab's Cybersecurity Case Study Competition Hosted By The Economist's Which MBA? Site

NEW YORK, Dec. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- How can cyberthreats to digital voting be prevented in an era of increasingly sophisticated hacking? This was the challenge posed to 19 teams at business schools around the world in the Kaspersky Lab Cybersecurity Case Study Competition, hosted by The Economist's Which MBA? site.

Kaspersky Lab experts selected the top three proposals, and visitors to the case study competition website voted for the People's Choice winner:

• First place was awarded to the team from New York University, which proposed the usage of a "permissioned blockchain" configuration, in which a central authority admits voting machines to the network before the start of the election, followed by voting machines acting autonomously to build a public, distributed ledger of votes. In addition to addressing threats to the integrity of the system, NYU's plan allows voters to tell if their individual vote was counted.
• Second place was awarded to the team from University Of Maryland College Park's Maryland Cybersecurity Center, which proposed a solution rooted in global public keys that encrypt ballots, public voter id's for verification, voter receipts using randomly generated numbers, and cryptographic tree data structures that permit each voter to check that their vote was counted.
• Third place was awarded to the team from Newcastle University, which proposed a solution rooted in three protocols: the Open Vote Network, DRE-i and DRE-ip.
• The People's Choice Award went to the team from Rutgers University's Professional Science Master's Program after they received the most votes from the general public.

"The competition was very interesting and I was very impressed with the submissions," said Eugene Kaspersky, Chairman and CEO of Kaspersky Lab. "There was a lot of good work there! The challenges of cybersecurity mean the next generation of experts face a changing frontier – there will be plenty of things to work on and securing digital voting systems for national elections is just one example. If cybercriminals exploited one small vulnerability, it could potentially change the course of a nation's history, and these young scholars are bringing us one step closer to making secure igital voting a reality."

The teams' videos can be viewed along with their written analyses onThe Economist's Which MBA? site.

The 19 teams who competed hailed from:

• California State Polytechnic University
• Champlain College Online
• City University of New York
• DePaul University
• Drexel University
• Edinburgh Napier University
• Florida Institute of Technology
• George Mason University
• Maryland Cybersecurity Center
• New York University
• Newcastle University
• Northeastern University
• Plymouth University
• Rutgers Graduate School
• Saint Peter's University
• University of Arkansas at Little Rock
• University College London
• University of Maryland
• Queen's University Belfast

To inquire about opportunities to sponsor or participate in an upcoming case study competition hosted by The Economist's Which MBA division, visit: success.economist.com.

The case competition challenge and resulting selection of winners are based solely on the opinion of the challenge sponsor. The Economist does not endorse the opinions contained in the content of the challenge or the participants' written and video submissions.

About Which MBA? (economist.com/whichmba)
Which MBA? is a division of The Economist Newspaper Group which offers a suite of online products serving both prospective MBA students and business schools. Our consumer products for prospective students include a GMAT preparation course, annual MBA rankings, and content on Economist.com. Which MBA? offers multi-media advertising solutions for business schools ranging from online MBA fairs, to traditional online and print mediums, to custom white-label lead generation tools.

About The Economist (economist.com)
With a growing global circulation (more than 1.5 million including both print and digital) and a reputation for insightful analysis and perspective on every aspect of world events, The Economist is one of the most widely recognized and well-read current affairs publications.

About Kaspersky Lab (kaspersky.com)
Kaspersky Lab is a global cybersecurity company founded in 1997. Kaspersky Lab's deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company's comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky Lab technologies and we help 270,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com.

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SOURCE The Economist's Which MBA? division

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