Judging Criteria
Transparent evaluation framework ensuring fair and comprehensive assessment of all submissions.
Eligibility & Requirements
Important guidelines to ensure fair competition and quality submissions.
Teams must consist of:
- 1 to 4 members in total
- Project must be completely built during the hackathon
- Git history is required or any alternate way of viewing file history for your repo
- Problem Statement Track: Build solutions to provided problem statements
- Open Innovation Track: Build anything you want
Important note:
- No differentiation between tracks - all projects compete on the same criteria
- All code must be original work created during the hackathon
- You retain all intellectual property rights to your project
- Using pre-built projects or significant code from before the hackathon is not allowed
- All participants must follow the Code of Conduct
- No external help from non-team members during development
Scoring Breakdown
Our judges evaluate projects across four key dimensions, each weighted to reflect their importance in cybersecurity innovation.
How strong and meaningful the core idea is.
Evaluation Points
- Is the problem real and relevant?
- Is the solution novel or significantly better than existing solutions?
- Does the team clearly explain why the problem matters?
Examples
- 1–3: Generic idea, unclear problem
- 4–7: Reasonable idea but common
- 8–10: Unique or deeply relevant concept
Working prototype, code quality, and technical difficulty.
Evaluation Points
- Working prototype
- Code quality and architecture
- Security practices
- Technical difficulty
- Effective use of frameworks / APIs
Examples
- 1–3: Barely functional or mostly theoretical
- 4–7: Working prototype with moderate complexity
- 8–10: Robust, technically impressive implementation
Deployable solutions and practical tools.
Evaluation Points
- Can this realistically be used in production?
- Does it solve a real-world security / AI / web problem?
- Is it scalable?
Examples
- 1–3: Mostly conceptual
- 4–7: Could be useful with improvements
- 8–10: Immediately valuable or highly scalable
How original the solution is.
Evaluation Points
- New approach to a known problem
- Clever technical design
- Creative use of technology
Examples
- 1–3: Common or obvious
- 4–7: Some creativity
- 8–10: Truly innovative
How well the team explains their project.
Evaluation Points
- Clarity of explanation
- Demo quality
- Ability to answer technical questions
Examples
- 1–3: Confusing demo
- 4–7: Clear but basic
- 8–10: Excellent explanation and live demo
GitHub + Devpost submission quality.
Evaluation Points
- Clear README
- Setup instructions
- Code documentation
- GitHub structure
Examples
- 1–3: Minimal documentation
- 4–7: Acceptable documentation
- 8–10: Professional open-source quality
How Judging Works
A structured evaluation process ensuring every project receives fair and thorough assessment.
Judges review all submissions and score based on criteria
Top projects are selected for final presentation round
Finalists present live to judges and community
Judges finalize scores and select winners
Key Evaluation Areas
Understanding what makes a winning project across different aspects of cybersecurity innovation.
- Working and functional prototype
- Clean, well-architected codebase
- Implementation of security best practices
- Effective use of modern frameworks and APIs
- Addressing real-world security challenges
- Clear explanation of why the problem matters
- Novelty of the proposed solution
- Significantly better than existing alternatives
- Realistic production implementation
- Scalable architecture and design
- Immediate value to the security community
- Practicality over mere gimmicks
- Clarity and confidence in explanation
- High-quality, stable live demo
- Ability to handle technical deep-dives
- Professional documentation and README
In Case of a Tie
How we handle equal scores between projects.
In the event of a tie in final scores, the tied projects will participate in a demo round where they present their work to the judges. The judges will then make a final determination based on the quality of the presentation and their ability to answer technical questions.
Otherwise, no additional rounds are conducted - winners are determined by the scoring criteria outlined above.
Additional Information
Download detailed judging criteria and find answers to common questions about the evaluation process.
Get the complete judging criteria document with detailed explanations and examples.
Download PDFLearn about our expert panel of judges and their backgrounds in cybersecurity.
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Important Notice: Winners will be announced immediately after final judging. However, prizes will only be awarded after verification for plagiarism, code violations, and adherence to hackathon rules. Any project found to violate these guidelines will be disqualified, and prizes will be forfeited.