Housie: A Multiplayer Game for Cybersecurity Training and Evaluation

Abstract

The pandemic has forced the enterprise sector to work from home, resulting in social isolation and lack of social interactions among colleagues. Meanwhile, the situation also led to an increase in cybersecurity risks. We launched a multiplayer cybersecurity awareness game to bring our organization's employees together and simultaneously equip them with cybersecurity knowledge. Bingo, one of the most played multiplayer games, was modified within the context of cybersecurity to provide a learning and entertaining experience to the players. This paper showcases an online, multiplayer, serious game ‘Housie’, launched for the enterprise sector, that integrates fun, immersion, and learning into one package. We discuss our initial study with over 56,000 participants, which provided insights into the cybersecurity awareness of our organization's employees. Our study found that the multiplayer format was widely accepted and provided insights on certain cybersecurity topics that need in-depth training.