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Cybersecurity Awareness Platform with Virtual Coach and Automated Challenge Assessment

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Computer Security (CyberICPS 2020, SECPRE 2020, ADIoT 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 12501))

Abstract

Over the last years, the number of cyber-attacks on industrial control systems has been steadily increasing. Among several factors, proper software development plays a vital role in keeping these systems secure. To achieve secure software, developers need to be aware of secure coding guidelines and secure coding best practices. This work presents a platform geared towards software developers in the industry that aims to increase awareness of secure software development. The authors also introduce an interactive game component, a virtual coach, which implements a simple artificial intelligence engine based on the laddering technique for interviews. Through a survey, a preliminary evaluation of the implemented artifact with real-world players (from academia and industry) shows a positive acceptance of the developed platform. Furthermore, the players agree that the platform is adequate for training their secure coding skills. The impact of our work is to introduce a new automatic challenge evaluation method together with a virtual coach to improve existing cybersecurity awareness training programs. These training workshops can be easily held remotely or off-line.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the participants of the survey for their time and their valuable answers. This work is financed by portuguese national funds through FCT - Fundacão para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., under the project FCT UIDB/04466/2020. Furthermore, the third author thanks the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and ISTAR-IUL, for their support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Siemens AG, Munich, Germany

    Tiago Gasiba & Anmoal Porwal

  2. Universität der Bundeswehr München, Munich, Germany

    Tiago Gasiba & Ulrike Lechner

  3. Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), ISTAR-IUL, Lisboa, Portugal

    Maria Pinto-Albuquerque

Authors
  1. Tiago Gasiba
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  2. Ulrike Lechner
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  3. Maria Pinto-Albuquerque
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  4. Anmoal Porwal
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tiago Gasiba .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik, Norway

    Sokratis Katsikas

  2. Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Frédéric Cuppens

  3. Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Nora Cuppens

  4. University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece

    Costas Lambrinoudakis

  5. University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece

    Christos Kalloniatis

  6. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    John Mylopoulos

  7. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Annie Antón

  8. University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece

    Stefanos Gritzalis

  9. Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

    Weizhi Meng

  10. University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Steven Furnell

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Gasiba, T., Lechner, U., Pinto-Albuquerque, M., Porwal, A. (2020). Cybersecurity Awareness Platform with Virtual Coach and Automated Challenge Assessment. In: Katsikas, S., et al. Computer Security. CyberICPS SECPRE ADIoT 2020 2020 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12501. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64330-0_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-64329-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-64330-0

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