Roll With It: Awareness Raising with Cyber Defence Dice

Abstract

Cybersecurity awareness is widely recognized as an important requirement, but is frequently overlooked or addressed in ways that do not engage the interest of the target audience. In an attempt to broaden the options available for achieving this, the paper discusses the concept, design and evaluation of a new dice-based game designed to promote entry-level cyber security awareness in relation to common forms of attack and defence. The concept of the game is that players can defend against prior attacks, or use attacks to test defences, with the images on the different die faces denoting threats and safeguards of different strengths and which are countered in different ways. The discussion includes a worked example of one of the game modes that has been designed in order to illustrate how players would take turns and make decisions in practice. It then presents initial results from a series of seven hands-on playtest sessions conducted with a range of audiences, including the general public, cyber educators and cyber professionals. The findings indicate that all audiences were positive about the game concept and found it enjoyable to play. Additionally, it was recognized to have value in raising and maintaining awareness, and would be a game that participants would play again and recommend to others.