Escaping cyber attacks

Abstract

This research seeks to investigate the design and effectiveness of mobile escape room games as a tool for cybersecurity education. With an increasing prevalence of cyber attacks on both individuals and organizations, effective cybersecurity education has never been more necessary.By taking a mixed-methods approach, we conducted initial interviews, prototype interviews, research studies, surveys, and participant interviews in order to create and test our mobile escape room game. It consists of three rooms, where participants encounter real cybersecurity scenarios and must successfully overcome challenges to progress further through the game.Our research results illustrate how mobile escape room games are an effective means of cybersecurity education. After playing our escape room game, participant knowledge increased significantly while their engagement and enjoyment increased considerably.Implications of this research for cybersecurity education are far-reaching; as the mobile escape room game provides an engaging approach to teaching essential cybersecurity concepts. Future work could explore its use as a scalable educational tool accessible to a broader audience as well as evaluate whether adding additional gamification elements would prove effective.