Who would have known that locking your employees in a room for 15 minutes could become their new favorite way to learn about cybersecurity?
In a never-ending quest to find innovative ways to raise awareness on cybersecurity topics, the Wavestone team might have very well unearthed the new golden nugget.
Tested and approved by hundreds of our clients’ employees, read on to find out the secret recipe that makes cybersecurity best practices so easy to digest.
Employees are assembled into teams of four or five participants.
The mission starts with a 10-minute briefing where they receive a lightning-fast training to become agents, and step into the shoes of hackers to perform their mission – should they accept it.
They are then given 15 minutes to uncover as many confidential documents as they will find in their fictional target’s office. The game elaborately weaves in clues of varying difficulty level related to key security topics, including passwords, physical security, and social engineering to name a few.
Finally, participants come out of their adventure eyes bright and laughing, enthusiastic to move on to a 15-minute debriefing, where best cybersecurity practices are explained.
In the end, the activity mobilizes employees for a mere 40 minutes, which pass by in a flash, and leaves them motivated to implement concrete actions to protect their organization.
Gamification never disappoints
Quite a few years might have passed since you and the members of your organization ran around your school’s playground, but one thing remains the same: games are still a unanimously popular way to learn.
Through gamification, people become actors, instead of spectators, of the learning process and embody the principles that you aim to instill in them. Keeping in mind that practice makes up 70% of the learning process, that is an opportunity that is hard to pass by.
When adopting an active posture, participants get immersed in the activity, and they do not even realize that they are acquiring precious skills that will serve them and their organization’s security well for years to come.
Spice it up with competition
What do football, chess, and Monopoly have in common? Besides the fact that they are all games, they also include an element of competition.
In the context of a challenge, competition acts as a strong motivator and a driver to perform. Add a fun and safe environment to the mix, and you have yourself a perfect combination to tremendously boost engagement.
Our cyber escape game includes a smart scoring system, so teams feel driven to reach the highest score, and you can gather information on overall performance. That’s what we call a win-win.
The more the merrier
When faced with a puzzle to solve, who would be against a little bit of help?
Indeed, completing an exercise on one’s own can be daunting, if not just plain lonely.
As part of a cyber escape game, people are encouraged to collaborate to solve clues. Teamwork then makes the challenge even more fun as creative ideas to break codes burst and are implemented, rendering their success all the more rewarding.
Bring the human touch to learning experiences
To complement online training initiatives, providing staff with a way to engage in-person with cybersecurity experts allows to go the extra mile in accompanying them on their learning journey.
Indeed, this format promotes live discussions and gives people the opportunity to receive personalized answers to their specific questions related to security.
The result? Employees coming out of the activity with advice that precisely solves their pain points.
Not only is the format of the cyber escape game particularly appreciated by employees, it also presents multiple advantages for your organization in terms of implementation.
Take it from the Wavestone team !
Over the course of the month of October 2022, Wavestone Belgium carried out +100 cyber escape games sessions with +400 players across 6 countries.
As training sessions last 40 minutes each, up to 45 collaborators can be trained in one day, maximizing time-efficiency.
Further, customization is at the core of our approach, with a debriefing that exposes concrete ways to apply the best security practices that are most crucial to your organization.
Although we could keep on enumerating the benefits that a cyber escape game can bring to an entity’s security, a game is still worth a thousand words.
Curious to understand how the cyber escape game leaves employees asking for another serving of awareness activities? Get in touch with our expert Thomas Vo Dinh to organize a free session.
See you on the other side, agent 😉
