The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how cybersecurity teams detect threats, investigate incidents and respond to attacks. But a global hacking competition has delivered a message that should resonate strongly with the Philippines’ growing pool of cybersecurity professionals: the most powerful security tool may still be the person behind the keyboard.
That was one of the clearest takeaways from the 2026 Kaspersky{CTF}, a global cybersecurity competition that brought together 1,657 academic and corporate teams from 98 countries.
Five teams emerged as champions after 24 hours of hands-on security challenges designed to replicate the increasingly sophisticated techniques used by real-world attackers.
For Filipino cybersecurity professionals and aspiring cyber defenders, however, the significance of the competition goes beyond the international leaderboard.
The event demonstrates that technical creativity, problem-solving and the ability to work through unfamiliar vulnerabilities remain highly valuable skills—even as AI becomes increasingly capable of performing parts of the cybersecurity workflow.
This is particularly relevant for the Philippines, where organizations across government, banking, telecommunications, healthcare and other industries are becoming increasingly dependent on digital systems. As the country’s digital footprint expands, so does the need for professionals capable of defending those systems against increasingly complex threats.
The Kaspersky{CTF} provides a glimpse of the type of expertise that will be needed.
Organized for the second consecutive year by Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) and Kaspersky Academy, the competition tested participants in cryptography, binary exploitation, AI security, modern threat analysis and investigation, as well as cloud-based techniques.
The 2026 competition attracted 1,024 academic teams and 633 corporate teams. Participants submitted nearly 17,000 flags during the contest, with 5,238 accepted. All 31 challenges were eventually solved.
The winning teams were Fluid Attacks from Colombia, Security Hub from Italy, Odin from ENKI WhiteHat in South Korea, VoidSec from IKLIGHT in Morocco, and CUT from Central University in Russia.
The scale of the competition offers Filipino cybersecurity practitioners another reason to look beyond certifications and theoretical knowledge.
Cybersecurity is ultimately a hands-on discipline. Knowing that a vulnerability exists is different from finding it under pressure, understanding how it can be exploited and determining how to defend against it.
That is precisely the environment that capture-the-flag competitions attempt to recreate.
And as AI becomes more prominent in cybersecurity, that hands-on capability could become even more important.
AI can analyze enormous volumes of information and assist with repetitive security tasks, but it does not eliminate the need for people who can challenge assumptions, connect disparate pieces of evidence and devise unconventional solutions to problems that have not been encountered before.
Leonid Bezvershenko, senior security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT, said the competition showed that even with increased AI use, the most critical and complex challenges continued to require human insight, creativity and deep technical understanding.
For Filipino professionals, that should be viewed less as a warning about AI and more as an opportunity.
The Philippines has a large technology workforce, but competing internationally in cybersecurity requires more than simply knowing how to operate security software. The skills that matter increasingly include threat hunting, reverse engineering, vulnerability research, exploit development, digital forensics, cloud security and the ability to reason through an attack from an adversary’s perspective.
CTFs offer a relatively accessible way to develop those capabilities.
They allow students and practitioners to experiment with security concepts in a controlled environment, make mistakes without compromising production systems and learn how to solve problems that cannot always be answered by searching for a ready-made solution.
The global nature of Kaspersky{CTF} also illustrates what is at stake.
A Filipino cybersecurity professional does not necessarily have to compete only for opportunities within the local market. Cyber threats are borderless, and so is the demand for people who can understand and counter them.
The five winning teams will next face another test at the offline SAS CTF during Kaspersky’s Security Analyst Summit in Bali from October 20 to 23. They will compete in an Attack-Defense format against eight SAS CTF qualifier winners for a top prize of $18,000.
The finals will form part of the 18th edition of the Security Analyst Summit, which brings together cybersecurity researchers, analysts and industry professionals to discuss advanced cyberattacks, threat intelligence, emerging technologies and security research.
For the Philippines, the broader lesson is worth paying attention to.
The cybersecurity skills that professionals develop today—whether through university programs, security labs, open-source projects or CTF competitions—can potentially become globally competitive capabilities tomorrow.
And in an era when AI is increasingly capable of finding patterns, writing code and assisting with security analysis, the advantage may increasingly belong to the professionals who know what questions to ask, where to look and how to think when the answer isn’t obvious.
The future of cybersecurity may be powered by AI. But competitions such as Kaspersky{CTF} suggest that the people who know how to challenge, direct and outthink that technology will remain indispensable.
For Filipino cyber defenders, that is perhaps the most important challenge of all.