Timely Feedback in Unstructured Cybersecurity Exercises

VYKOPAL, Jan, Radek OŠLEJŠEK, Karolína BURSKÁ and Kristína ZÁKOPČANOVÁ. Timely Feedback in Unstructured Cybersecurity Exercises. Online. In Proceedings of Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, February 21–24, 2018(SIGCSE’18). New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2018, p. 173-178. ISBN 978-1-4503-5103-4. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159561.

Basic information

• Original name: Timely Feedback in Unstructured Cybersecurity Exercises
• Authors: VYKOPAL, Jan (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution), Radek OŠLEJŠEK (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution), Karolína BURSKÁ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution) and Kristína ZÁKOPČANOVÁ (203 Czech Republic, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: New York, NY, USA, Proceedings of Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, February 21–24, 2018(SIGCSE’18), p. 173-178, 6 pp. 2018.
• Publisher: ACM

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Proceedings paper
• Field of Study: 10201 Computer sciences, information science, bioinformatics
• Country of publisher: United States of America
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Publication form: electronic version available online
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14610/18:00102073
• Organization unit: Institute of Computer Science
• ISBN: 978-1-4503-5103-4
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159561
• UT WoS: 000481890100034
• Keywords in English: timely feedback; personalized feedback; cybersecurity; exercise; active learning; professional learners
• Tags: core_A, firank_A
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Cyber defence exercises are intensive, hands-on learning events for teams of professionals who gain or develop their skills to successfully prevent and respond to cyber attacks. The exercises mimic the real-life, routine operation of an organization which is being attacked by an unknown offender. Teams of learners receive very limited immediate feedback from the instructors during the exercise; they can usually see only a scoreboard showing the aggregated gain or loss of points for particular tasks. An in-depth analysis of learners' actions requires considerable human effort, which results in days or weeks of delay. The intensive experience is thus not followed by proper feedback facilitating actual learning, and this diminishes the effect of the exercise. In this initial work, we investigate how to provide valuable feedback to learners right after the exercise without any unnecessary delay. Based on the scoring system of a cyber defence exercise, we have developed a new feedback tool that presents an interactive, personalized timeline of exercise events. We deployed this tool during an international exercise, where we monitored participants' interactions and gathered their reflections. The results show that learners did use the new tool and rated it positively. Since this new feature is not bound to a particular defence exercise, it can be applied to all exercises that employ scoring based on the evaluation of individual exercise objectives. As a result, it enables the learner to immediately reflect on the experience gained.

Links

• MUNI/A/1038/2017, interní kód MU: Name: Zapojení studentů Fakulty informatiky do mezinárodní vědecké komunity 18

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A

• VI20162019014, research and development project: Name: Simulace, detekce a potlačení kybernetických hrozeb ohrožujících kritickou infrastrukturu (Acronym: KYPO II)

Investor: Ministry of the Interior of the CR, Simulation, Detection, and Mitigation of Cyber Threats Endangering Critical Infrastructure