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Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Cybersecurity Awareness Games

Analysis of Player Behavior and the Potential of Electroencephalography

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Innovations in Cybersecurity Education
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Abstract

The promise of dynamic difficulty adjustment in personalized learning is discussed, along with the potential of low-cost electroencephalography (EEG) headsets to provide quick, continuous player feedback. This is followed by the results of a study involving these elements in the context of a cybersecurity educational video game. Player actions and EEG readings were recorded, along with a pretest and posttest of student knowledge and opinions regarding information security awareness and perceived immersion. This study employed Brute Force, a tower defense game that teaches players to choose strong, unique, and memorable passwords. Participants reported significantly more responsible attitudes regarding the importance of strong, unique passwords. More successful players who played the full 15 min tended to improve at identifying strong passwords from a list. After playing the game, participants were most likely to add password length and uniqueness as important password strategies.

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Correspondence to David Thornton .

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Thornton, D., Turley, F. (2020). Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Cybersecurity Awareness Games. In: Daimi, K., Francia III, G. (eds) Innovations in Cybersecurity Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50244-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50244-7_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-50243-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-50244-7

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