A renewed approach to serious games for cyber security

We are living in a world which is continually evolving and where modern conflicts have moved to the cyber domain. In its 2010 Strategic Concept, NATO affirmed its engagement to reinforce the defence and deterrence of its state members. In this light, it has been suggested that the gamification of training and education for cyber security will be beneficial. Although serious games have demonstrated pedagogic effectiveness in this field, they have only been used in a limited number of contexts, revealing some limitations. Thus, it is argued that serious games could be used in informal contexts while achieving similar pedagogic results. It is also argued that the use of such a serious game could potentially reach a larger audience than existing serious games, while complying with national cyber strategies. To this end, a framework for designing serious games which are aimed at raising an awareness of cyber security to those with little or no knowledge of the subject is presented. The framework, based upon existing frameworks and methodologies, is also accompanied with a set of cyber security skills, itself based upon content extracted from government sponsored awareness campaigns, and a method of integrating these skills into the framework. Finally, future research will be conducted to refine the framework and to improve the set of cyber security related skills in order to suit a larger range of players. A proof of concept will also be designed in order to collect empirical data and to validate the effectiveness of the framework.