CyberGuard chronicles: design, implementation, and assessment of a game-based platform for cybersecurity awareness in Bangladesh

Abstract

The online world is being bombarded with information that users need to be aware of, and in developing nations such as Bangladesh, high levels of social media exposure can become deadly and pose online safety threats to users with little experience in internet safety and navigation. In this context, target age groups of young internet users (10-16 years) and older age groups (45+ years) can be vulnerable to internet security threats, as they have frequent presence on the internet and have a limited understanding of it. This thesis uses a human-centred design (HCD) approach to design, assess, and implement a gamified platform for basic cybersecurity training and enhance the human-computer interaction for safer usage and navigation on the internet. The platform was developed using the Bangladeshi context in particular. To identify the risks and potential hazards, initially, semi-structured interviews (n=63) were held with the selected age groups. Moreover, the results from the interviews were used to identify the loopholes and the preferred method to combat the situation. The interviews were used to highlight the major risky areas, such as safe usage of passwords or password hygiene (PH), potential hazards of phishing, etc. The result also backed up the gamified approach with a major acceptance from the young participants. However, 68.57% of older participants preferred secondary methods like classroom or seminars. Based on these findings, a role-playing game (RPG) was developed in Unity engine to implement the gamification technology and help simulate and navigate real cyber threats. To make the approach more concrete, the RPG was then compared to a traditional lesson in a controlled study environment(n=96), in the case of the young participants’ age group, as the older participants were reluctant to the gamified intervention. The results concluded that gamified technology had better learning gains and higher engagement for the young participants. The theoretical contributions of this work include a HCD-informed needs assessment for cybersecurity education at a foundational level in Bangladesh, a context-informed RPG solution, and empirical proof that game-based learning can achieve better results for younger learners. Moreover, our work suggests further implications in the national curriculum to enhance cybersecurity awareness and promote best practices.