When AI Fights Back: Simbian’s 2025 Hackathon Challenges Humans to Outsmart the Machines – Source: securityboulevard.com

In the 1988 cult classic They Live, protagonist John Nada discovers that, with the aid of special sunglasses, he can see hidden messages and threats lurking beneath the surface of everyday life. Similarly, in today’s digital landscape, threats often hide in plain sight, masked by the sheer volume and complexity of data. Artificial intelligence (AI) has become both the perpetrator and the protector in this scenario, crafting sophisticated attacks and defending against them with unprecedented speed. 

Recognizing the dual-edged nature of AI, Simbian, under the leadership of CEO Ambuj Kumar, is hosting an innovative AI Hackathon on April 8, 2025. This event offers a unique opportunity for participants to engage in a live cybersecurity challenge where AI has already addressed the majority of threats, but the most elusive dangers remain concealed, awaiting human discovery.​ 

The Challenge: 

Participants will enter an environment where Simbian’s AI SOC Agent has autonomously processed 100 alerts from major platforms such as Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Splunk, SentinelOne and Microsoft. The AI has resolved 90% of these threats, but the remaining 10% — the hidden “flags” — require human intuition and expertise to uncover. This setup not only showcases the capabilities of AI in handling routine security tasks but also emphasizes the irreplaceable value of human insight in identifying and mitigating sophisticated threats.​ 

Why This Matters: 

The cybersecurity landscape is rapidly evolving, with AI playing a pivotal role in both offense and defense. The 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report highlights that 68% of breaches involved a non-malicious human element, such as employees falling victim to social engineering attacks or making errors. This underscores the critical need for solutions that combine AI’s efficiency with human intuition to effectively detect and mitigate sophisticated cyberthreats early in a kill chain.​ The hackathon brings to focus the necessity of integrating human intelligence with AI capabilities to fortify cybersecurity measures effectively.​  

Event Highlights: 

• Live Environment: Experience a real-time security operations center where AI agents have preemptively addressed numerous threats.​ 
• Human-AI Collaboration: Engage in a scenario that demonstrates the synergy between automated AI responses and human analytical skills.​ 
• Competitive Edge: Participants will be evaluated based on the number of hidden threats they identify and the efficiency of their investigative approaches.​ 

This inaugural Simbian AI Hackathon represents a pioneering effort to blend AI automation with human expertise in a practical setting, one that reflects the future trajectory of cybersecurity operations. As AI continues to evolve, events like this highlight the enduring importance of human judgment in safeguarding our digital world. 

The AI gauntlet has been thrown, the octagon is ready, and after years of high-level marketing echoing “AI, AI, AI” like Dogbert in a Dilbert cartoon, Simbian is leading the charge and finally handing the mic to the true innovators: The builders, tinkerers, defenders and misfits who push the boundaries of AI/ML every day. This event is a call to action for those who bring the human edge to the AI equation. 

To paraphrase Nada from John Carpenter’s They Live (1988): For all you AI/ML cyber warriors out there ready to chew bubble gum and kick some serious threat actor tail — but you’re all out of gum — this is your moment. 

So, AI innovators of the galaxy, be there when the collective mic drops or B²! 

Note: Due to GPU capacity constraints, participation is limited. For more information and to register, visit here.

A Rare Prequel From the Author

I rarely write prequels before attending an event. But in this case, I’m making an exception. The Simbian AI Hackathon feels like an impactful, engaging and long overdue moment of real significance for the global technical community as part of the broader AI conversation. I’ll be there to cover it in depth, and my guess is we’ll all look back on this not just as a competition, but as an early blueprint for how cybersecurity operations will evolve: AI handling the scale and speed, and humans bringing context, creativity and critical judgment. 

So, for those ready to don their metaphorical “sunglasses” and reveal the concealed threats that AI alone cannot detect, this event offers a compelling, timely and exciting challenge.​ I’ll have my sunglasses on for (as John Bender said in the 1985 classic film The Breakfast Club) “better hallway vision!”

See all y’all (yes, we really say that in Texas) there!