Leveraging Competitive Gamification for Sustainable Fun and Profit in Security Education

With the ongoing IT security arms race advancing at a fast pace, there is a continuously high requirement for well-educated security professionals to protect today’s IT infrastructure from malicious attacks. While the necessary IT security expertise can be gained through continuous learning and practical exercise, the approach quickly becomes tedious and tiring for students. At Vienna University of Technology, we offer a series of two consecutive security courses leveraging gameful design and competition to increase the motivation among students. The courses have been established for a decade with currently more than 400 participants each year and 1,219 educated students since 2012. In this paper, we present our game-like course setup and evaluate the unique approach through student surveys. Our results indicate that the well-established gaming-like competitive approach is not only highly appreciated by our students, but also raises their interest and motivation to put more effort and extra work into their security education.