IT community from Central Asia: TSARKA

Olzhas Satiev, city — Astana, President of TSARKA, Facebook

About the Community

The TSARKA community was established in 2014. Its primary and main goal is to create a platform for professional communication. Here, you can ask any question or discuss news or cases related to Information Security (IS) in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, the CIS, and the world at large.

The second goal is to signify belonging to a professional community. Members share their achievements, exchange acquired skills, and draw the community's attention to various situations from a cybersecurity perspective.

The third goal is job search, including internships during studies, community consultations on career path selection, and advice for young specialists on setting goals.

Cybersecurity is not a closed topic; it cannot exist outside the IT market, the country's economy, and other factors. Therefore, events occurring within the country and abroad that affect the development of the industry and its specialists are also discussed.

Community Members

Initially, our target audience consisted of experienced cybersecurity professionals. However, at present, the chat includes a large number of professional IS managers, representatives of senior and middle management of companies, public figures, officials, and deputy ministers. The number of participants grows daily.

Joining the community is simple. You need to subscribe to the Telegram channel. There is a set of standard rules outlined in the chat. The key rule is respect for other community members and constructive dialogue.

Events for Community Members

It is difficult to separate the company itself from the community. Any initiative conducted or supported by the company is communicated through the community, and a significant number of participants come from there. Everything that TSARKA supports is also supported by our community. Members are the first to receive access to information.

How the Community Helps with Development

Information Security, or IS, always requires practical skills and the ability to search for information, which is considered an important basic competency for specialists and community members. If newcomers are not ready to use this skill initially or ask questions that have already been discussed and can be easily found in a search engine, they may need more time before becoming full-fledged members of the group.

Nevertheless, all of this provides opportunities for development. When a person asks genuinely appropriate questions about their development, they are always helped. There are those who can answer any question or suggest where to find information. This is a key track for professional growth.

Much of what community members do reflects how the industry relates to a particular issue.

Successful Projects

Current TSARKA products and projects:

— BugBounty platform TUMAR.ONE. This is a reward program for finding vulnerabilities in information systems and resources. We attract independent researchers, also known as "white hackers" or "bug hunters," to identify vulnerabilities in information systems and resources for monetary rewards.

— WEBTOTEM monitoring platform. This is a personal assistant for web application security based on artificial intelligence.

— USB security token

— Secure smartphone. This involves proprietary software, industrial design,

and controlled production.

— KazHackStan — the annual and largest conference in Central Asia on cybersecurity, attracting over 5,000 visitors.

Plans

Among the upcoming events, we plan a series of activities related to finding "bug hunters" through the TUMAR.ONE program. Also, a key event is KazHackStan.