Wargaming a career in cyber: Gamification of incident response to promote cyber in high schools

Ask a talented high school student what career they are interested in or leaning towards, and you hear the same answers over and over again. Medicine, Law, International Relations, Law, Engineering, Law. While some students have already discovered and begun working towards a career in cyber security, many students have not considered a career in our industry. Even when they are aware of cyber security as a career choice, many perceive it through the lens of stereotypes about hackers with hard technical skillsets and dismiss it.

This session will talk about the engagement problem that cyber security faces in high schools and the importance of engaging with students with a broad set of skills to meet the workforce needs of tomorrow and how we can leverage existing tools and concepts we use already within our industry to foster increased engagement and interest in cyber security as a career path.

In this session we will talk about some of the underlying concepts within wargaming and gamification and then talk about the value of incident response tabletops at getting as much buy in from high schoolers as they do from senior executives in major corporations.

After the discussion, we will do a run through of a gamified incident response discussion as students would experience it. After winning or losing in our tabletop game, we will talk through the lessons learnt and open the floor to discussion for how we as an industry and better engage with school students and improve the understanding and interest in our industry as a career path