teissTalk: Playing it safe - the gamification of security awareness training

teissTalk host Jenny Radcliffe was joined by Lauren Zink, Manager- Security Culture and Awareness, Indeed.com; Vetea Lucas, Regional Chief Information Security Officer, Sodexo; and Melanie Oldham OBE, Founder & CEO, Bob’s Business.

How gamification can make security training more appealing and efficient

In structural gamification, game elements are added to the structure of the content, but the content itself remains unaltered (leaderboards, points or badges for completing tasks, etc).

Meanwhile, in content gamification you are turning the whole learning process into more of a game or an experience (e.g., challenges). Benefits in both cases include higher engagement and positive peer-to-peer influence but efforts need to be made to keep up the engagement in the long term when the novelty of the gamification approach is wearing off.

People also have different learning styles and may not prefer a competitive approach to learning. Some might see gamification as yet another example of being patronising with your employees. The training program shouldn’t come from IT but be a product of collaboration between various departments such as legal and HR. People, however, can get sometimes more interested in the reward than the task itself.

Also, giving rewards may be construed as a punitive measure as it involves exercising power over those to be rewarded. Meanwhile, gamification, especially content-type, can challenge your thinking and behaviour and how you’re gonna respond and thus makes the process more immersive.

Some might object to gamification saying that it can trivialise the challenge, but the main aim of gamification is to increase the low engagement level of online learning and help trainees get over the first hurdles of absorbing content. Gamification is to a certain extent a misnomer and is put on all types of tools and methods that enable “fun training.”