Skip to main content

TSYS School Professor and Student Team Up to Develop Cybersecurity Training Game

The lack of cybersecurity awareness among everyday users is a significant issue that can have detrimental effects on individuals and organizations alike. Traditional training methods such as slideshows and presentations have proven to be ineffective and can cause trainees to feel overwhelmed, overloaded, confused, or bored. To address this issue, TSYS School professor Rania Hodhod and TSYS School computer science student Harlie Hardage teamed with Safia Abbas of Ain Shams University and Eman Abdullah Aldakheel of Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University to develop an adaptive serious game that teaches cybersecurity in an effective, engaging, and personalized manner is proposed. As Hodhod explained, "Serious games provide an immersive and simulated experience that can help users determine how they might act in real-life scenarios. However, existing cybersecurity serious games often measure effectiveness outside of the game using surveys, tests, and interviews, which can lessen immersion and the simulated experience. Therefore, measuring improvement within the game itself can provide more meaningful data and derive truer conclusions about the usefulness of serious games in teaching cybersecurity." 
     The goal of the research study, which appears in the current issue of Electronics, was to develop such a game and measure its effectiveness in a way that can inform future cybersecurity training programs in a way that improves cybersecurity awareness and reduce the risk of cyber threats. The game they developed is called CyberHero, and it is a narrative manager that drives the development of the overall story using an interactive branching storyline to educate users about cybersecurity by allowing the users to experience the consequences of their actions in the digital world. The framework followed to create the game narrative ensures that the scenarios are interesting, influential, and hold relevant but intriguing meanings to the players. The game identifies nine competencies. These are password security, system updates, network security, antivirus protection, phishing awareness, device security, physical security, browser security, and secure file and information sharing. Each of these competencies requires the inclusion of specific tasks that users must complete. This necessitated the creation of at least nine tasks, with two variants available for each task—one for the initial trial and another for retesting if the user needed it. The second task was not an exact repetition but rather a similar task addressing the same competency.  Users reported that the game is helpful, with 79% of the participants admitting that they learned new things by playing the game, 84% saying that they were engaged by the background story, 68% agreeing that they had fun while playing the game, and 84% recommending the game to others.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ABDC Releases 2025 Journal Review, Now Ranks Journal Edited by Phil Bryant

The long-awaited journal review being conducted by the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) has been released and there are a number of news items that relate to faculty in the Turner College. One of these is the ABDC's decision to now include  Compensation and Benefits Review in its journal rankings. This is big news for the Turner College as its editor, Phil Bryant , is a professor of management in the Turner College. The ABDC is proposing that the journal enter its system for the first time as a C-rated journal. Acting Turner College Dean Tesa Leonce sits on the journal's editorial board, while Turner College management professor Mark James has guest-edited an issue of the journal. Published by SAGE,  Compensation & Benefits Review is the leading journal for senior executives and professionals who design, implement, evaluate and communicate compensation and benefits policies and programs. The journal supports compensation and benefits specialists and academic ex...
Post a Comment
Read more

New Butler Center Report Identifies Employment Gaps in the Columbus Area

Officials in the Turner College's Butler Center for Research and Economic Development recently put the finishing touches on an extensive report on trends in educational programs and occupations in the Columbus area. The report also includes data on business and technology trends.  According to Fady Mansour , Director of the Butler Center, there are several key takeaways from the report regarding 10 occupational gaps that currently exist in the Columbus area. First,  software development occupation exhibits the biggest labor shortage, with the report adding that the TSYS School has a bachelor's degree program in information technology along with a new AI track for the bachelor's degree in computer science, both of which can qualify students for this occupation. Other educational programs are in demand, such as computer programming and cloud computing. Second, there is a gap of 30 employees per year in general and operations management. This gap could be addressed by the Turn...
Post a Comment
Read more

TSYS School, Jianhua Yang, Lixin Wang Each among Top Five in the World

New research by computer scientists in the School of Information Technology at Universiti Utara Malaysia that ranks institutions and individuals on the basis of scholarship in the area of stepping-stone attacks heaps praise on the Turner College’s TSYS School of Computer Science and two of its faculty – Jianhua Yang and Lixin Wang .   The article, published in the April 2023 issue of the International Journal of Research in Engineering and Science , provides a bibliometric analysis of both publication and citation data from 2000 to September of 2022 related to research on stepping-stone intrusion.   Among several results, it reports that Columbus State University ranks second worldwide, trailing only the University of Houston, using total publications on the subject as the basis of comparison.   A number of other U.S. institutions appear in the top 10, including third-ranked North Carolina State University, fourth-ranked University of Illinois, sixth-ranked Iowa State U...
Post a Comment
Read more