Mission to Mars: Use Video Games to Motivate and Train your Cyber Workforce
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Presented at Texas Cyber Summit 2023 by
NEEDED: Bring your own laptop The classic question to CISOs is "What keeps you up at night?" Apart from a catastrophic ransomware attack, losing your best cybersecurity talent to deep-pocketed competitors is high on the list. All CISO's know that a good cybersecurity program involves skillful management of people, processes, and technology. However, security processes and technology are essentially worthless without highly skilled and dedicated cybersecurity professionals, and we all know demand vastly outstrips supply in today's cybersecurity job market. So, what is a smart and proactive CISO to do to attract and keep their best and brightest? The answer may be to simply let them play games. Wait, seriously? Let's face it, cybersecurity techies also tend to be big-time gamers, so why not leverage video games to recruit, train, and retain your cybersecurity workforce? This 2-hour, hands-on workshop will introduce attendees to recently open-sourced software that enables gamified cybersecurity competitions and training. Following this introduction, attendees will be given the opportunity to play a freely available video game sponsored by the US Government's newest executive agency: the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA. In partnership with Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, CISA administers the annual President's Cup Cybersecurity Competition. Mandated by Presidential Executive Order, the President's Cup seeks to identify and reward the best cybersecurity professionals and teams across the US government and military services. To do this, CISA and CMU have utilized gamified scenarios and created immersive video games to maximize interest and participation in the competition. Now these innovations are available to the cybersecurity community at large. Presenters will use the first 45-minutes to present and demonstrate these concepts/technologies and then attendees will use their laptops and web browsers to access a cloud-based instantiation of the game for the remainder of the session. Conference Wi-Fi and power outlets are all that's required for this highly innovative workshop.