Presenting cybersecurity ideas in a fun and engaging way may be a tall order, but during an 8-week game-building challenge hosted by Secureworks and the DevPost community and platform, that’s just what participants did. While Secureworks offers award-winning technology created to help organizations build their cybersecurity posture, without cybersecurity literacy skills, individuals remain open to cyberattack.
This is the second part of a series of interviews with the winners of the 2022 Secureworks Cybersecurity Challenge. We recently sat down with Rico Beti and Xin Tong to hear about Cysec Intern, a cybersecurity game concept they developed to promote cybersecurity literacy. Their submission took second place in the competition, which saw over 350 registrants.
In this game, players take the role of a newly hired intern. Decisions made during the day, like whether to write their email address on a public shop roster, shine light on cyberliteracy concepts. A judge said Cysec Intern was a brilliant example of an intelligently constructed educational game.
“I thoroughly enjoyed testing and playing the game, and felt clear attention had been paid to even the smallest details,” said the contest judge.
Secureworks sat down for a question-and-answer session with Rico and Xin. Check out what they had to say:
Q. What is your background in game development and/or in cybersecurity?
Rico Beti and Xin Tong: We don't really have a background in these fields per se. This was actually the first game we have made. Regarding cybersecurity, I guess we're exposed to the topic through our work. I am a Software Engineer, so cybersecurity concepts are important and come up daily. Xin works at a bank, where applying these concepts practically is extremely important as well.
Q. What was your inspiration for the game?
Rico Beti and Xin Tong: We both like these kinds of games (top-down RPGs) and we think it is fun to explore a world and to be able to interact with people/objects at certain locations. It's also straightforward to expand and add more locations, tasks, etc.
Q. What aspect of security do you hope your game will teach the public?
Rico Beti and Xin Tong: We think that everyone should understand basic cybersecurity concepts – this already goes a long way in protecting our digital lives. For example, knowing the difference between HTTP/HTTPS, or that phishing websites are designed to trick you, or that social engineering is a thing that exists and being aware of it.
Q. Any general comments?
Rico Beti and Xin Tong: This was a really interesting and different challenge that allowed us to dive into game development and made us think about how cybersecurity concepts could be taught easily and in a fun way.
Learn more about the game they created here: https://devpost.com/software/cysec-intern
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