About

Starting from 2022, the first edition of the International Cyber Lab at the Black Sea (#CyberLabBlackSea) will take place in Vama Veche, Romania. By participating in the Cyber Lab one will go through an intense programme that allows participants to gain practical understanding of cyber security. During the Cyber Lab, participants will experience gamified learning, namely work on challenging hands-on cases provided by experts from international organisations.

More details will follow closer to the date, for questions please contact the initiator of the project D. Catalui via e-mail below.  

APPLY as participant:

To be updated soon.

Programme Committee 

Dr. Claire VISHIK, INTEL / as General Chair for CyberEDU call for papers 

Prof. Dr. Udo HELMBRECHT, University of Munich 

Mircea GEOANA, founder of Aspen Institute Romania and deputy Secretary General of NATO 

Marco THORBRUGGE, senior cyber security scientist 

Manuela CATRINA, European School Ovidiu Sincai

Mikko KARIKYTO, Ericsson

Dan CIMPEAN, CERT RO 

Organizing Committee

PRECUP Silvana, cybersecurity strategy professional  

CATALUI Daria, cybersecurity awareness professional 

LEGUESSE Yonas, University of Malta 

ROTARIU Mihai, CERT RO

STANESCU Radu, Sandline 

TBC

Call for partnering organisations from public and private sectors.  By sponsoring the Cyber Lab from its first edition you have the chance to support an innovative programme and get to know top talents in cyber.   

The CyberLAB sponsorship packages are categorized as bronze, silver and gold.  Each sponsorship package is described below, including sponsorship requirements and privileges. 

CyberLAB general Context 

What is gamified cyber training? In the cyber security world, highly skilled human resource is scarce (Harvard Business Review-HBR, 2017). Good training for on-the-job professionals is essential according to HBR. Cyber education refers to face-to-face training, demos, quizzes, educational articles, but particularly game-based learning. An exemplification for better understanding could be found in references like CyberReadyGame, the Network and Information Security quiz (ENISA), and the Network and Information Security Education map (ENISA). But gamification is introduced in cyber education also in the form of table-top cyber exercises like Cyber Europe or Locked Shields and different other facilitated exercise games. 

Gamification is a practice of enhancing a specific service by implementing game design elements in a non-game context to enhance the user’s general value creation and knowledge (Huotari, Hamari, 2011; Deterding et al., 2011). Specifically, for cyber security, some previous work I was involved in points to the finding that gamification design may be considered quite useful by practitioners, for example common gamification strategies used are simulations, quizzes and exercises, competitions like Capture the Flag or Bug Bounty type. It is not a new trend, but rather a practice in consolidation. In terms of technology, the same research shows that in the majority of online services the preference is for scalable technology, neutral to be used on cross-platforms, attractive and responsive.  In terms of why gamification is used, data show reasons like usability, efficient enabler of knowledge acquisitions, and learning-by-failure approach. In terms of useful technical features there is a tendency of playing for instant gratification, a culture where we have immediate rewards like visibility, peer-to-peer recognition, building up a reputation (Hall of Fame, ranking, and statistics), creating a new 'something'.

By using cyber security, we refer to the international standard (International Telecommunications Union ITU recommendation -T X.1205, approved in 2008). Cyber security strives to ensure the attainment and maintenance of the security properties of the assets against relevant security risks in the cyber environment. Of course, the interesting part in the current work is the training and education subtopic in cyber security. 

References

EU Agency -ENISA, Network and Information Security quiz, 2016, www.enisa.europe.eu 

EU Agency -ENISA, Network and Information Security Education map, 2017, www.enisa.europe.eu  

EU Agency -ENISA, Cyber Europe exercise, 2018, www.enisa.europe.eu 

European Commission, CyberReadyGame, article published in 2018, accessed in April 2019, https://www.betterinternetforkids.eu/web/portal/practice/awareness/de tail?articleId=3296029

Catalui D. (2017), Cyber security education in public administration. Case study on gamification methods used in Europe, published in EDULEARN 2017 proceedings 

Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., &Nacke, L., 2011, From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining Gamification. In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: 9–15. New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery.http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040

Harvard Business Review, article Cybersecurity Has a Serious Talent Shortage. Here’s How to Fix It, 2017, accessed April 2019  https://hbr.org/2017/05/cybersecurity-has-a-serious-talent-shortagehere… .

International Telecommunication Union- ITU (May, 2017), retrieved from: http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/studygroups/20132016/17/Pages/cybersecurity….