Designing Serious Games for Cyber Ranges: A Socio-technical Approach

Abstract

Appropriate training is an effective solution to tackle the evolving threat landscape and conflicts in the cyber domain and to fulfill security requirements. Serious games demonstrate pedagogic effectiveness in this field, however, they need to comply with national, organizational, and individual strategies and characteristics. These games provide the players, individually or in groups, with an opportunity to develop their adversarial and system thinking skills to set up effective defenses. To this end, in this paper, we propose a framework for designing serious games that raise security awareness. The proposed framework considers the complex nature of the cyber domain, the knowledge and motivation of participants, and the experiential learning using cyber ranges. The framework is based on existing frameworks, and integrates their advantages to form a comprehensive framework. Future research should refine the framework and design serious games to evaluate its effectiveness in producing desired end results.

Cybercompetitions: A survey of competitions, tools, and systems to support cybersecurity education

“…A cyber range gives a safe, legal environment to develop cybersecurity skills and has proven to be extremely useful for competition hosts. Research has been published in designing games that raise awareness in cybersecurity and help raise "adversarial and system thinking skills" (Kianpour et al, 2019).…”

Discovering the New Place of Learning

“…Kristina Juraitė Building New Culture Participation in Hyperconnected Environments: Agency-Oriented Approach Figure 1� Lithuanian Aviation Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania-We will fly! Photograph: Mindaugas Kavaliauskas� ���������������������� Figure 2� Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, Poland-Culture in many dimensions� Photograph: Mindaugas Kavaliauskas� ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Figure 3� Engagement with museum (Simon, 2010, p� 91)� ����������������������� Figure 4� Queen Studio experience in Montreux, Switzerland� Photograph: Mindaugas Kavaliauskas� ���������������������������������������� Figure 5� Audience engagement pyramid (Rosenblatt, 2010)� ������������������ Figure 6� The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland-A marathon of emotions� Photograph: Mindaugas Kavaliauskas� ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Figure 7� Semiotic representation of cultural experience as a construct of the triadic relationship between community, institution, and audience (Russo & Watkins, 2005, p� The 4Ps of creativity (based on Zhang et al�, 2016;Doyle, 2018;Cramond, 2020)� ������������������������������������������������������������������� Figure 6� Stages of object research (prepared by the author)� �������������������� Figure 7� Presentation of the research process (prepared by the author)� �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Figure 8� Body temperature is recorded in the photo (prepared by the author)� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Figure 9� The exhibition "ON/ OFF" (prepared by the author)� ���������������� Figure 10� Information stand (prepared by the author)� ������������������������������ Judita Kasperiūnienė Science Communication in Environmental Online Games Figure 1� Mapping of the main types of gamified virtual environments (adapted from Wattanasoontorn et al�, 2013;Laamarti, Eid, & El Saddik, 2015;Djaouti, Alvarez, & Jessel, 2011;Kianpour et al�, 2019)� ���������������������������������������������������������� Figure 2� Screenshot of the "Collaborative Classification of Serious Games" website, which classifies serious games according...…”

Extended Reality (XR) and Gamification in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

“…These games are applied within a learning context, where the story is part of a thoughtful process designed to guide students towards specific learning goals. Serious games have also been investigated as a tool for cybersecurity training in cyber ranges [170]. Other related works include platforms used for Cyber Exercises, Capture the Flag events, and training and competence assessment [171], [172].…”