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Update Converting Cybersecurity Practice Into Engaging Serious Games

 

Via: MAVI Interactive LLC - Agent Surefire: Inside Threat

Shortly after my post Converting Cybersecurity Practice Into Engaging Serious Games, , MAVI released Agent Surefire: Insider Threat, which is over three times larger and provides a more in-depth cyber security awareness training than the previous Agent Surefire: Breach Buster.

The new "Serious Game" has won the Gold Stevie® Award for Best Training Application in the app awards categories of The 2012 International Business Awards, plus 6 others.

First released in 2010, the Agent Surefire series of immersive Cybersecurity Serious Games allow trainees to practice—in first person view—how to notice and avoid cyber-security vulnerabilities inside the workspace. The Stevie Award-winning Agent Surefire: Insider Threat is the third chapter in this series.



Cyber Crime is an ever-evolving threat. Developing skills in identifying and detecting tell-tale signs of breaches help individuals to respond in adaptive ways. Agent Surefire: Insider Threat places the trainee in the position of a skilled inspector in a real-world cyber breach scenario happening in near-real-time. Common threat vectors are mapped onto the training objectives while more advanced threat vectors are laced into the scenario, providing a dynamic environment for engaged decision making and hands-on experience. Applied gaming theory and neuroscience of learning provide immersion, repetition, emotional responses and develop critical thinking.

The game is now a full scale organizational training tool with full behavioral data collection and reporting.

There are almost 300% greater Cybersecurity content compared to the previous version. There are a lot of more animated and interactive content in delivering the scenario elements which also deliver some of the training materials.

MAVI has completely re-built the environment and the scenario, continuing on the existing dramatic theme of Agent vs. Hacker, expanding the Agent Surefire “universe”.

The Bonus Mission breaks into three different story paths with 5 different endings, all depending on the trainees’ response to a difficult choice; “catch the hacker or save the data”. This game has also an original soundtrack recorded by a real 30-piece orchestra, (Skywalker Sound, CA) in the same fashion as console games.

Game Context

Trainees are asked to take on the role of “Agent Surefire”, find and categorize Threat Vectors and Vulnerabilities, and to stop an on-going breach from happening. The human-interest storyline keeps the attention level high, while the original score enhances the multi-sensory experience (MAVI has posted a teaser video on Vimeo).





The game content is run on the MAVI Serious Game Engine, which collects time-stamped behavioral information on each trainee, and provides training administrators with a clear understanding of each trainee's critical-thinking skills as well as identifying their weaknesses.



Bora Aytun, co-founder and CEO of MAVI Interactive, says: “Gaining critical-thinking skills is essential in securing an organization’s intellectual property."

“Cyber attacks are constantly evolving. It is next to impossible to keep up with all the new threats. We simply must learn to recognize the signs and avoid common mistakes. Cyber attackers always aim for the weakest link in the chain of defense, which is usually vulnerability caused by an individual’s day-to-day actions. Technology can’t always save users from making poor choices, so users must become aware of their direct impact in securing sensitive information.”

Adds Aytun: "Neuroscience today is teaching us how to deliver content in ways the human brain can easily absorb. Our mission is to make the highest quality experiential learning available to the masses. With our powerful platform we create highly effective training simulations at a fraction of the cost and time.”

About Bora Aytun

Bora Aytun is the CEO of MAVI Interactive, LLC, which he co-founded in 2008.  He is also the co-founder of MAVI Film, specializing in Internet/TV broadcast integration and B2B product development for the broadcast industry. Prior to that, he was IS Project Manager at Alpha Scientific Corporation.  In 1990, Aytun started his own consulting company, MAVI Consulting, serving a number of media and marketing companies in Turkey from 1990 to 1998. Aytun has a degree in Business Administration and Communications from Ege University in Turkey.

About MAVI Interactive

MAVI Interactive develops immersive training simulations and Serious Games. The company partners with industry leaders in training and education to create a wide range of engaging learning tools. MAVI’s partners and clients benefit from an award-winning gamification methodology and the MAVI Serious Gaming Engine and Platform to drastically reduce deployment time and costs in solving challenging training problems.