Educational escape rooms for inescapably engaging cyber security group training

Traditional cyber security training for staff can be perceived as dull, forgettable, and treated as a box-ticking compliance exercise (until a real incident occurs). This hands-on workshop offers a radically different approach by combining high-energy experiential learning with practical game-design skills through educational escape rooms.

This workshop is in two parts. One part will be immersing participants in a cyber escape room experience where they will solve a series of three puzzles in small groups and work towards stopping an active cyber threat. The second part of the workshop will empower participants to create their own puzzles, narrative and experiences so they could deploy similar engaging activities at their workplaces, clients or universities to equip people to be more cyber resilient. 

The puzzles used have been tested across three universities and multiple businesses to show an appropriate level of challenge, comradery and excitement for participants. In terms of narratives the workshop will equip participants to understand the 6 fundamental escape room narrative story arcs with dozens of examples of themes which fit into these. In terms of puzzles the workshop will demonstrate over a dozen different puzzle typologies which can be adapted to create a cohesive game based learning experience.