For the twentieth time, the prestigious awards (think about this like the Oscar awards in IT) were presented at the IT GALA social event. Nominated candidates competed for awards in four categories. They are also a member of the ITAS Presidium Michal Blažej from LB Studio.

The IT Gala 2022 awarded a range of key actors in technology and digital in Slovakia. Let’s take a look at the winners of the competition – and why they have been selected as the main contributors to bridging the digital skills divide and bringing innovation on a national, local, and regional level in Slovakia. 

The winners of the IT Gala 2022 Awards 

Most influential IT Personality 

The award for most influential IT personality was handed to Ivan Makatura, Director General of the Cybersecurity Competence and Certification Centre. The Centre has been operational since 2020, and has experience of  more than a quarter of a century in the field of information security and IT management. In his professional career, he has been the head of the security department in banks and in transnational consulting services. As a judicial expert in the security and protection of information systems sector, he is included in the Register of Experts, Interpreters and Translators of the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic. It is a certified auditor of information and cybersecurity security.

Best IT Project 

In the IT project category of 2022 CyberGame is awarded from the National Cyber Security Centre SK-CERT. It is the first original Slovak cyber-security CTF game (CTF). The game has 10 scenarios with 56 tasks, with tasks logically linked to each other. Players are introduced to the various ways in which malicious codes can work. Cryptography and resource code obscuration force players to decrypt encrypted or blurred information. In turn, forensic analysis encourages them to look for digital traces in the collected data. OSINT analysis is an analysis of open sources and information on the internet leading to a flag. The game is intended for programmers, gamers, students, cybersecurity professionals, teachers and the general public.

Best IT product 

LiveAgent Quality Unit, s.r.o. was awarded the expert jury with the IT product of 2022 and is a multi-resourced helpdesk system for customer support. It effectively combines communication through email, live chat, social networks, customer forum and built-in call centre into one practical tool. It helps companies to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can be easily measured thanks to NPS (Net Promoter Score). The system’s main priorities include in particular the speed of customer resolution, the efficiency of the tools used, satisfaction with the services offered and affordability. The facility is open to small and medium-sized enterprises, larger companies or multinational corporations wishing to provide top customer service and support to their clients.

Best IT firm 

Capturing Reality holds the title of most influential IT firm of 2022. The winner of this category is based on quantitative criteria. The ranking is prepared by Across Private Investments, FinStat and Digital Visions (Nextech). The main criterion for classification is the fact that firms belong to the information and telecommunications technology sector as their main business. Out of these, 100 were selected. The selected companies were then assessed in terms of year-on-year EBITDA growth, return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA) and profit margin.

Price of Nextech Magazine Readers 

A novelty between the awards was the Special Prize of Nextech readers with the question: ‘What company or personality do you think most contributed to better coping with the Covid 19 pandemic in Slovakia?’ The nominees have nominated candidates for three categories:

Innovation

In this category, Pavol Chekan, founder and CEO of MultiplexDX, which is involved, among other things, with coronavirus detection tests.

Education

The trophy for this category was handed over by an independent citizens’ initiative ‘ Data without Patos’, which contributed to the objective perception of data on the progress of the pandemic.

Digital technologies

The prize in this category was won by Unilabs Slovensko, s.r.o. for the digitisation of diagnostic services via the lab.online portal during the Covid 19 pandemic in Slovakia.

The 2022 IT FIRMA, IT personality, IT PRODUKT and IT PROJEKT awards were awarded at the IT GALA Ceremony in Edison Parku in Prievozská Street in Bratislava on Thursday 20 October 2022.

The nominations were decided by a panel composed of IT journalists and representatives of professional IT organisations composed of: Ivan Kopáčik (ISACA), Ján Šebo (CTF), Mário Lelovský (ITAS), Ľubor Illek (Slovakia.Digital), Filip Hanker (Živé.sk), Slavomír bača (Mentor Partners/robime.it) Ján Lunter (KInIT) and Martin Drobné (NEXTECH).

The annual event of the Slovak IT GALA, organised by Digital Visions, the publisher of NEXTECH magazines and NexTech.sk, was moderated this year by Adela Vincze.

Other information: Martin Drobný, mdrobny@nextech.sk

NEXTECH and NEXTECH.SK are leading media mapping the field of information and communication technologies in Slovakia. They are based in the Digital Visions publishing house, which also deals with market research, organisation of expert conferences and other projects to support computerisation.

The event was supported by: Cross Private Investments, o.c.p., a.s., Aliter Technologies, a.s., Antik Telecom, s.r.o., Asseco Central Europe, a.s., ASUS COMPUTER Czech Republic s.r.o., CDESK/InovaLogic, s.r.o., CGI Slovakia s.r.o., Cisco Systems Slovakia, spol. s r.o., Československá Commercial banka, a.s., DATALAN, a.s., Deutsche Telekom Systems Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., digitWin, s. r. o., Digmia s.r.o., Disig, a.s., DITEC Commerce s.r.o., DNS a.s., branch of Slovakia, ED system a.s., organisational unit Slovensko, e-learnmedia, s.r.o., EMEL BRATISLAVA, s.r.o., ESET, spol. s r.o., Espirit Software Solutions s.r.o., Exclusive Networks Slovakia s. r. o., exe, a.s., For Best Clients, s.r.o., GlobalLogic Slovakia s.r.o., GLOBESY, s.r.o., GOPAS SR, a.s., IBL Software Engineering, spol. s r.o., IBM Slovensko, spol. s r.o., ICZ Slovakia a.s. Innovatrics, s.r.o., InterWay, a.s., IPESOFT, spol. s r.o., KODYS SLOVENSKO, s r.o., Lenovo (Slovakia) s.r.o., LYNX – limited liability company Košice, MACROFER, s.r.o. MICROCOMP – Computersystem s.r.o., ORACLE Slovensko spol. s r.o., Orange Slovensko, a.s., ORIWIN, s.r.o., RESCO spol. s r.o., Rittal s.r.o., SecTec, a. s., sp., a.s. Slovak Telekom, a.s., SOFTEC, spol. s r.o., SOFTIP, a.s., SYNCHRONIX, a.s., Unicorn Systems SK s. r. o., VSL Software, a.s.

Credit: Nextech