Sandro Fouché
ABSTRACT
The nation needs more cybersecurity professionals. Beyond just a general shortage, women, African Americans, and Latino Americans are underrepresented in the field. This not only contributes to the scarcity of qualified cybersecurity professionals, but the absence of diversity leads to a lack of perspective and differing viewpoints. Part of the problem is that cybersecurity suffers from barriers to entry that include expensive training, exclusionary culture, and the need for costly infrastructure. In order for students to start learning about cybersecurity, access to training, infrastructure and subject matter experts is imperative. The existing Code Hunt framework, used to help students master programming, could be a springboard to help reduce the challenges facing students interested in cybersecurity. Code Hunt offers gamification, community supported development, and a cloud infrastructure that provides an on-ramp to immediate learning. Leveraging Code Hunt's structured gaming model can addresses these weaknesses and makes cybersecurity training more accessible to those without the means or inclination to participate in more traditional cybersecurity competitions.
- J. A. Amorim, M. Hendrix, S. F. Andler, and P. M. Gustavsson. Gamified Training for Cyber Defence. In NATO Modelling and Simulation Group MSG Annual Conference. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 2013.Google Scholar
- J. Bishop, R. N. Horspool, T. Xie, and N. Tillmann. Code Hunt: Experience with coding contests at scale. Proc ICSE, 2015.Google ScholarCross Ref
- S. Combéfis and J. Wautelet. Programming Trainings and Informatics Teaching Through Online Contests. Olympiads in Informatics, 8:21–34, 2014.Google Scholar
- M. C. Libicki, D. Senty, and J. Pollak. Hackers Wanted: An Examination of the Cybersecurity Labor Market. Hackers Wanted: An Examination of the Cybersecurity Labor Market, June 2014. Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. Nowicki, M. Matuszak, and A. Kwiatkowska. Teaching secondary school students programming using distance learning: a case study. In 10th IFIP World Conference on Computer in Education, pages 246–254, Toru´ n, Poland, 2013. Nicolaus Copernicus University Press.Google Scholar
- R. Shumba, K. Ferguson-Boucher, E. Sweedyk, C. Taylor, G. Franklin, C. Turner, C. Sande, G. Acholonu, R. Bace, and L. Hall. Cybersecurity, women and minorities: findings and recommendations from a preliminary investigation. In Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Innovation and technology in Computer Ccience Education Working Group Reports. ACM, June 2013. Google ScholarDigital Library
- T. Sommestad and J. Hallberg. Cyber Security Exercises and Competitions as a Platform for Cyber Security Experiments. In Secure IT Systems, pages 47–60. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012. Google ScholarDigital Library
- N. Tillmann, J. de Halleux, T. Xie, S. Gulwani, and J. Bishop. Teaching and learning programming and software engineering via interactive gaming. In ICSE ’13: Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Software Engineering. IEEE Press, May 2013. Google ScholarDigital Library
- T. Xie, J. Bishop, N. Tillmann, and J. de Halleux. Gamifying software security education and training via secure coding duels in code hunt. HotSoS, pages 26–2, 2015. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Code hunt as platform for gamification of cybersecurity training
Recommendations
Gamification of cybersecurity training
Gamify 2022: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Gamification of Software Development, Verification, and ValidationA large fraction of cybercrimes could be prevented with improved cybersecurity awareness training. We have developed a virtual cybersecurity escape room based on the three-dimensional Unity game development platform. This application is based on the ...
Game based Cybersecurity Training for High School Students
SIGCSE '18: Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationCybersecurity is critical to the national infrastructure, federal and local government, military, industry, and personal privacy. To defend the U.S. against the cyber threats, a significant demand for skilled cybersecurity workforce is predicted in ...
Evaluating Cybersecurity Certifications: A Framework for Extracting Educational Scenarios in Cybersecurity Training
PCI '23: Proceedings of the 27th Pan-Hellenic Conference on Progress in Computing and InformaticsIn the rapidly evolving domain of cybersecurity, traditional educational paradigms often fall short in equipping students with the practical skills necessary to defend against real-world threats. This paper delves into a review of existing literature, ...
Comments