The 502 Project is a gateway to the cybersecurity community – providing free access to subject matter experts, challenges, and events – centralizing volunteer, mentorship, and recruitment efforts across the cybersecurity ecosystem.
The cybersecurity community plays a crucial role in the cybersecurity workforce, fostering professional development, the adoption of the adversarial mindset, and access to a network of mentors and peers. It also functions as a limiter, creating barriers to demographic parity and slowing efforts to scale the workforce to meet national needs. The 502 Project aims to remove those barriers and foster intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and intersectional participation in the cybersecurity community, safely and at scale.
A reference to the “Bad Gateway” HTTP error code, The 502 Project aims to overcome a longstanding gap between aspiring practitioners and the professional cybersecurity community by creating a cybersecurity community platform that simultaneously provides students with a gateway to the cybersecurity community and professionals with a broader networking space.
Funded via a $3M federal award from the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C), the 502 Project is a non-profit coalition of university, non-profit, industry and government partners aimed at facilitating cybersecurity community.