Cyber Security Escape Room

A cloud based security awareness training in the form of a new, realistic, interactive and fun experience. Take on the role of a hacker and encounter multiple security topics and 25 learning points.

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Inspiration

The inspiration for the Cyber Security Escape Room has been the many years of experience we have in the IT security field, the need for more security awareness, and our own experience with boring and annoying mandatory security e-learnings. We wanted to make a more enjoyable and fun security awareness training for both home and corporate usage.

What it does

The Cyber Security Escape Room is a browser-based interactive experience where participants will take on the role of a hacker. The goal of the escape room is not to escape, but the players need to get access to a specific document (the end-goal is configurable). The players will experience what it takes to hack someone by exploiting multiple security issues. While going through a fully realistic scenario they will come in to contact with several cyber security related learning points.

How we built it

We started out with a whiteboard post-it session where we added all the topics to the whiteboard which we wanted to include in the experience. We then combined the separate topics and created logical steps and related puzzles. These were then included in a custom scenario we wrote which involved all the steps.
After creating the full scenario and designs for the puzzles we created the escape room in Unity, designed images and 3D designs, and wrote a backend in PHP and MySQL.
We further added a learning point system, a hint system, a tutorial, multiple languages, configurable end-goals, two difficulty settings, downloadable certificate and a selfie option.

Challenges we ran into

Creating the full experience was a lot more work than we anticipated. Working with Unity can be challenging and it definitely has a steep learning curve. We further found out that gamification of security awareness is not for everyone, not everyone likes to play a game.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our game is suited for home users as well as corporate and experienced IT users. We had a lot of great feedback from our test-users. Fellow security experts really like our approach and enjoy playing the game themselves.

What we learned

We mostly learned that building a game is not an easy task and actually is a lot of work and a never ending process of making adjustments and fixing (small) bugs. Also, different screen resolutions are a real challenge for a game developer.

What's next for Cyber Security Escape Room

We are adding support for more languages and are looking in to other options of gamification of the security field.

Play the game

The game is cloud based and works in all major web-browsers and does not need anything to be installed. Please note: To test the game you will need an access seat-code. A code has been provided to the organizers of the hackathon. In case anyone else wants to check out the game please add a comment below and we will provide a seat-code to you.

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