A Pilot Study in Cyber Security Education Using CyberAIMs: A Simulation-Based Experiment

Abstract

We hardly pass any day without hearing of a new cyber attack. The recent ever-increasing occurrence of such attacks has given to researchers, practitioners and others an opportunity to raise awareness and train staff from the public and private institutions, as well as other people within the society, about the evolving nature of cyberspace threats. As a first step in this process, we aim to present main findings from a pilot study conducted with a target group of Master students with diverse backgrounds and knowledge about cyber security practices. The study was done using an agent-based simulation tool, CyberAIMs, as the core component of the experiment. Students were involved in a pre-test/post-test study in order to assess the probable change in their thinking process after using CyberAIMs. A scenario created from a real cyber case was additionally used to get the participants accustomed to the tool. The experiment is still in progress, while preliminary data indicate that there is a shift in students’ perspective on the most relevant attributes affecting defense agents’ performance, results that could be related to both adversarial and systems thinking processes.