Kaspersky Innovation Hub (Kaspersky iHub*) is starting a new round of selection for highly-specialised startups under the Open Innovation Program initiative. All teams and individual developers that create solutions combining information security and computer games are invited to participate in the selection.

Under its initiative, Kaspersky Innovation Hub seeks projects from the following areas:

• Tools for protecting gamers, their prizes and progress, and their entire gaming record;
• Anticheats: solutions for combating cheating in cybersport and online games;
• Matchmaking services that make it easier to find gaming partners;
• Voice chats and community management tools designed for different platforms;
• Tools for searching and analysing post-game videos based on neural networks;
• Voice assistants and VR/AR management tools that provide new capabilities for managing devices and gaming components;
• Gaming mode and settings for the hardware and software environment, and Do Not Disturb mode;
• Secure tools for mobile broadcasting and streaming, and services for secure data exchange and content creation;
• Digital rights management to protect content and gaming prizes.

The best projects will be able to compete for pilot implementation together with Kaspersky and obtain the capability to scale their product for the international market. These startups will also receive technical and business mentoring. Projects that successfully launch a pilot will be provided access to the Kaspersky partner channel (including distributors and resellers), and also to its customers throughout the world.

This year, the selection of startups is being organised by Kaspersky Innovation Hub under the support of F6S, one of the leading global platforms for corporate innovations. Technical and business validation will be conducted by a group of Kaspersky analysts, and the F6S Corporate Innovation Analyst Insights service will be employed to assess investment attractiveness.

"We can see that the gaming industry as a whole and cybersport in particular are growing at enormous rates. Of course, this multibillion-dollar business is also attracting cybercriminals who try to defraud gamers, for example, by stealing valuable gaming resources (funds, equipment, characters) and employing specialised software to obtain an unfair advantage in games. Essentially, the first example is theft, and the second example is fraud. It should be especially concerning that the gaming industry currently has few services for securing the communication between players and the exchange of gaming content. We want to resolve these problems through the joint efforts of our company and innovative projects. Therefore, attracting services combining information security and gaming to the Innovation Hub is the reasonable trajectory of our fight against cybercriminals," said Vitaliy Mzokov, director of Kaspersky Innovation Hub.

The selected startups that make the finals will present their projects to a jury at the final Selection Day event. This event will be held online on June 30.

To receive more detailed information and to submit an application to participate in the selection, visit here: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/gaming-campaign-may-2020/.

The applications are accepted until May 31, 2020.