The value of Playing

SecureIT just finished its second year of hosting a national Capture the Flag tournament in close collaboration with the SANS Institute. The CTF was a reminder of why active engagement in such events is fun, and more importantly proactive learning at its finest.

There are great gains to be had both for companies and their employees, if you further emphasize on education and training in cybersecurity by engagement in a meaningful way.?

Capture the Flag (CTF) is one of the most effective ways to increase the level of security awareness and literacy. CTFs take different forms, and can be quite varied in style and application. The basics of CTFs are that participants must undertake different problem-solving or programming tasks, and for each task that teams or individuals complete, they are given a flag that equates to points. There are different types of tasks in CTFs, including cryptography challenges (decrypting or encrypting data), steganography challenges (finding information hidden in files or images), and web challenges (exploiting web pages to find specific pieces of text).?

CTFs are different; based on who they are designed for, they can be made for people of various skill sets, from the curious person taking their first steps in information security, to the seasoned pro’s who live and breathe cyber.

The value of your employees participating in a CTF

CTF tournaments present multiple benefits to learning cybersecurity. The participants will be focused on problem-solving, researching, communicating, and collaborating. CTFs provide the perfect opportunity for employees to explore and investigate content - on their own terms. Instead of sitting in a conference room, watching videos or web-seminars, the employees search online and discuss between themselves how to solve the security challenges. Active participation in a CTF forces your employees to think outside the box and use their own skills to solve problems.

CTF’s are gamifying the way we learn about cybersecurity, creating a challenging yet attainable competition. They make the learning process more fun and entertaining while giving employees increased awareness of how they can protect the business in a positive way.

Coordination and collaboration are an important part of the workplace. Employees participating in a CTF practice working together as a team, to communicate and delegate clearly, they explore different approaches to solving problems, as well as the obvious boost to their cybersecurity knowledge and understanding.

Benefits employees get in participating in a CTF:

• Boost in employee happiness and engagement
• Opportunity to get their hands dirty in a safe environment and learn from failure
• Heightened critical thinking skills within your team
• First-hand experience with how security breaches can happen
• Employees are more alert to potential security risks
• Increased employee retention
• Participation in a fun event!

CTF allows managers to identify security champions who can help the company increase their security posture and be a step ahead of the competition. The gamification of cybersecurity training eases the learning process, and the competition aspect can motivate your employees to improve their cybersecurity understanding and skills.