Cyber Tigers - improving cybersecurity through gamification

The joint Design Thinking challenge from Uniper and Infosys was: “Develop a more effective and entertaining information security training”

Globalization brings great advantages for companies like Uniper. To take advantage of these benefits, companies need to further digitalize their structures and processes. At the same time, this also increases the risk of online attacks and information leaks enormously.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced most companies to push ahead with their digitalization even more. This also requires every single employee to be sensitized to the topic of cyber security (CS) and to be able to take the appropriate measures in the event of a specific threat.

In the Design Thinking process, it is important to first take the user's perspective. As a first step, the student team tried to understand how employees and managers perceive cybersecurity at Uniper. They then investigated what kind of cybersecurity training was currently taking place and why it often did not have the desired effect.

The team of students also looked beyond Uniper: in conversations with employees from a variety of industries, the team found that CS training was often perceived as an additional burden. They were described as quite dry. Employees had no emotional attachment to the topic and did not feel responsible for the company's cybersecurity.

To raise awareness of cybersecurity among employees, the Design Thinking team suggested using gamification. After many discussions, including with gamification and CS experts, the idea and an initial prototype for Cyber Tiger emerged.

Cyber Tiger is an intuitive learning platform that uses entertaining videos and exercises to impart practical and tangible knowledge about CS in the spirit of “edutainment”. The main goal of the tool is to develop skills for responsible and independent problem solving in a digital environment.

After the presentation of the prototype for the Cyber Tiger platform by the Design Thinking team, the Chief Information Security Officer of Infosys Limited, Vishaal Salvi, decided to take the idea further and release Cyber Tiger not only at Infosys itself, but also as a solution for all Infosys clients. In addition, Infosys and HPI d-school are planning a long-term collaboration for future innovation projects in various areas.