Computing & Technology

We’re proud that our excellence in cybersecurity has gone global! 

APU’s Cyber Security teams, Shellhound and Et3rnal brought the nation immense pride and joy as they emerged as the Champion and the 1st Runner up of the recently concluded Regional Cyber Challenge 2019 that was held in conjunction with the Australian Information Security Association (AISA) Perth Conference.

Organised by Silensec and Cyber8Labs, Australia, the competition was a virtual competition that took place around the globe. Our teams prepared and went through the competition’s challenges at our Cyber Range, while they competed among 12 participating teams that came from 9 countries. 

Throughout the 5 hours of the competition, teams had to make use of their Incident Response skills to detect, respond and recover from cyber-attacks. It was an intense competition, as the teams’ capability were tested greatly through the challenging case scenarios, combined with the emergence of several vulnerabilities throughout the duration of the challenge. At the end of the challenge, both APU teams defeated their competitors and emerged as the TOP 2 TEAMS of the challenge!



At a recent prize giving ceremony held at our campus, both teams received their awards and certificates from Ms. Daisy Sinclair, Founder of Cyber8Lab Pty. Ltd., Australia, who flew here all the way from Australia to attend the ceremony.

CONGRATULATIONS to teams Shellhound & Et3rnal – thank you so much for making us proud! This achievement has once again proven that our students are capable to compete globally, as cybersecurity professionals of the future. The skills and knowledge possessed by them do not fall short of those who come from developed countries, and as graduates from a Malaysian university, they are definitely capable of standing in the eyes of the world!

Kudos to the teams’ mentors, Ms. Yusnita Yusof & Ms. Nor Azlina Abdul Rahman for their passion and dedication in leading the teams towards their success. Members of the 2 teams comprised:

Here’s another good news to share! 

Our team of APU students, Team Unique, comprising Chin Jess Nny, Lim Chu Sheng and Daryl Ong Wi Hsien, stood out among other participants in the 2015 Gamification Hackathon, which was jointly organised by Nettium and SelfDrvn Enterprise recently.

The team worked on an application called City Life, in which they applied the gamification concept into workplace applications. After demonstrating outstanding creativity and skills throughout the 30 hours of programme development, the team was crowned as champions of the competition. They walked away with a cash prize of RM4,000 and a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. 

The competition was an eye opener for the team, as they had the opportunity to meet IT professionals and participate in special workshops and talks; in which enabled them to gain more exposure towards the industry and its requirements to excel in this field. Congratulations and thumbs up to the team; special thanks to Ms Vinothini Kasinathan, the mentor of the team for the dedication and effort. We shall look forward to hear more success stories in the future!

Our Cyber Heroes did it again! 

At the recently concluded Cyber Heroes Competition (CHC) 2019 that was jointly organized by Cyber Security Malaysia (CSM), Standard Chartered Bank and APU, our Year 2 Cyber Security students, Imran Esack Dawoodjee, Sritaran Doraisamy and Nicholas Leow Yung Jian (Team Shellhound) achieved the highest score and were crowned champions of the challenge. The challenge was hosted at APU’s Cyber Security Talent Zone, where it saw the participation from 13 local private and public universities.

Our teams, FetchOrbis and Shellhound demonstrated extra confidence throughout the competition, in which team Shellhound performed excellently by demonstration skills and talents in forensic analysis and outstanding teamwork. At the prize giving ceremony that was held in Putrajaya Mariott Hotel, apart from attaining the championship, Imran, who was the member of team Shellhound, was also announced as the Most Valuable Player (MVP) for contributing the most points for his team. They receive their prizes from  YB Tuan Gobind Singh Deo, Minister of Communications and Multimedia who was also the guest of honour at the closing ceremony.

Apart from taking part in the competition, teams FetchOrbis and Shellhound also had the opportunity to be a part of the Safer Internet Day (SID) 2019  forum, to hear and discuss about youth initiatives in making the internet a safer place. Congratulations and well done to team Shellhound, as their mentor, Ms. Nor Azlina ffor their success!

3 days are all we need, for our students to demonstrate their outstanding coding skills!

At the recently concluded “3 Days of Code” Hackathon organized by Multimedia University (MMU), we are proud to share that 2 of our student teams – team ‘KarmaPoints’ and team ‘VRoomFor2’ walked away as the Champion and 1st Runner Up teams, earning 2 awards at once!

The “3 Days of Code” Hackathon is an event that combines coding competition and hackathon to gauge students’ programming and problem solving skills. Organised annually by the IT Society of MMU Cyberjaya, this competition was open to all undergraduate students from Malaysian private and public universities. At the competition, students were expected to demonstrate teamwork to propose solutions for systems in the fields of Transport, Education or Finance.

Team ‘KarmaPoints’ developed an innovative mobile app that allows users to collect loyalty points via services and to donate them to charity organisations, whereas team ‘VRoomFor2’ invented a matchmaking and ride-hailing platform that combines the concepts of organizing dates without worrying on the issues of mobility.

Both teams walked away with cash prizes of RM1,000 and RM750 respectively. CONGRATULATIONS to team ‘KarmaPoints’ and team ‘VRoomFor2’!

Apart from Engineering students, our Computing & Technology students had an opportunity to explore more about robotics & sensors as well!
 
Under the guidance of our lecturers, Umapathy Eganathan, Booma Poolan Marikannan and Vijayalaxmi Amuthan from School of Computing & Technology (SoCT), 80 students visited the Gardenia Bakery as part of their out-of-classroom experience.
 
At the visit, technical officers from Gardenia conducted a briefing followed by an exclusive tour, in which our students learnt about establishment of a Gardenia products and its history. At the bakery, our students explored more on the functionalities of robotic arms and sensors, while learning about the important roles played by these components under a manufacturing environment. Their knowledge of supply chain and logistics management broadened as well, while they were guided through the entire manufacturing process of Gardenia’s products.
 
The visit provided our students with a new realm of experience, particularly in the use of robotics and the technological applications within the manufacturing industry.

Lecturers and students from the School of Computing & Technology demonstrated innovative projects at the Malaysia Technology Expo (MTE) 2019 that was held recently. We are pleased to share with you that all 5 projects developed by our teams walked away with awards in both the “Mentor Mentee Awards” and the “Education Innovation Awards” categories.    

We are proud of our teams; it was an amazing experience for the students, while it provides them with real-life exposure and an opportunity to interact with industry professionals.

We are announced as the Top University at the KPMG Cyber Challenge 2018!

Our teams achieved tremendously, at the recently concluded competition. Among all universities that participated, our students achieved the highest number of awards in various categories, with their outstanding skills and knowledge in the cyber security field.

The challenge was a 4th installation initiated by KPMG, to nurture undergraduates on their ability to develop innovative, real-world cyber security solutions. Apart from the main “Cyber Security Challenge” track, KPMG’s strategic partners, Netpoleon, Google Cloud, FireEye and IET developed different tracks to assess participants on based different technologies. Our students’ have attained awards in the following categories:

Based on the highest number of awards achieved by our teams, we emerged as the Overall Champion and are now recognized as the Top University at the challenge!  Without doubt, this excellent performance was a result of dedication and effort by the mentors, Dr. Meisam Eslahi, Ms. Maryam Var Naseri, and Mr. Umapathy Eaganathan who have assisted, guided as well as supported the teams towards their success.

IRIS Corporation, as an established player in trusted identification, is an organization that has a significant international presence in 32 countries across the globe. With their proven expertise, IRIS offers global clients smart cards, secure ICs, inlays, cards and passports personalization and issuance by adopting the latest national and international regulations and technological standards. We are pleased to share that our students were able to gain the professional working environment and hands-on industrial experiences through the industrial visit to IRIS Corporation Berhad that was organized by the APU School of Computing & Technology. 

Under the guidance of Dr. Mohamed Shabbir, Afifah Binti Sabri and Nik Sakinah binti Nik Ab Aziz from the faculty, 35 students who were from the Cyber Security and Forensic Computing programmes had the opportunity to visit IRIS and listen from practicing experts in the field of cyber security.

Overall, it was a great beyond the classroom learning experience for students who learnt about the functioning of various biometric devices and its applications as well as more in-depth knowledge of the cyber security working environment - many of them even expressed their interest to undergo their internship or start their career with IRIS! Kudos to the faculty for organizing the visit!

“Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation drives economic growth.” - Edith Widder

In order to expose students towards the array of innovative ideas, the Technology Management (TM) cluster of APU School of Technology organized an industrial visit to International Business Machines (IBM) Client Innovation Center in Cyberjaya, Selangor to equip students with the latest knowledge and innovative technology. 23 students from various technology specialisms were accompanied by Mr. Mohammad Namazee and Mr. Jerry Chong.

The visit to IBM CIC began with a welcoming speech by Mr. Yogeswaran, Team Leader for Global Shared Services Department who introduced the organization business units and their operations throughout the globe, providing students with the desired qualities of graduates that a fortune 500 company demands.

Students were then taken through a technical hands-on session by Mr. Mohammad Rizk and Mr. Musharraf, Senior Business Intelligence Architects in charge of IBM’s Artificial Intelligence system, Watson. The session educated students regarding this high impact revolutionary A.I technology in the ever-changing industry.

Overall, students had a positive feedback about the visit, widening their awareness on Artificial Intelligence and IBM itself. This aligned with the objective of the visit to expose students to a real-life working environment as an IT professional, as well as to equip them with the knowledge and understanding about the current and latest technology.

Earlier this month, we signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with CASUGOL, a Singapore based international certification body, to officially kick-start an inspiring partnership to provide academicians, educators, researchers, and students with the opportunity to receive professional training and get certified in emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning, Big Data and Cloud Computing.

Based in Singapore, CASUGOL is an international certification body offering a wide range of professional training and certification programs designed for all industries and verticals. Courses designed by CASUGOL are constantly reviewed by educators who are industry experts in their chosen field to ensure that they remain current, relevant and consistently high quality.

As part of this partnership agreement, CASUGOL will serve as a principal and body of knowledge to transfer knowledge and technical know-how on Industry 4.0 related technologies to lecturers, researchers and students at APU and jointly organise courses, workshops, events with APU to encourage and promote the learning and adoption of industry 4.0 related technologies. This agreement also authorizes APU to incorporate and deliver CASUGOL Official Courseware within its academic curriculum.

This partnership is in line with the Malaysian Government’s drive to adopt Industry 4.0 which generally incorporates advanced sensors, machine-to-machine communication links, 3-D printing, robotics, artificial intelligence, big data analytics and cloud computing technology.