Digital platform for hands-on cybersecurity training
The cybersecurity panorama is alarming: cyberattacks in EU are costing businesses approx. €208 billion/year (1.6% of GDP), i.e. around €1.6 to €10.8 million per company. Indeed, 97% of companies are breached, only 53% of attacks are detected by internal resources and each attack takes a mean time of 99 days to be detected. Even though 90% of costs derived from cyberattacks are caused by vulnerabilities in production systems, companies still pose a reactive attitude towards attacks: 90% of them consider security an afterthought, trying to patch the eventual vulnerabilities once the system has been developed; and common security controls are focused on ‘firefighting’ attacks towards systems in the production stage instead of preventing them. However, each defect in a production system costs up to 95 times more than in the development stage, so it is clear that a more preventive approach for cybersecurity would decrease by orders of magnitude the damages caused by attacks by unveiling in earlier stages the vulnerabilities of IT systems. In order to solve these problems, ADVERSARY is a novel cybersecurity platform that helps companies minimising vulnerabilities from the very early stages of development, thanks to effective training of IT Managers and SW Developers. Our platform provides tools for hands-on cybersecurity training through a gamified experience that fosters participation, comprehension and reduces drop-outs. These activities are performed in real environments where users can experience different phenomena, and this active learning has shown to be 80% to 800% more effective for acquiring knowledge and skills. By receiving proper training on cybersecurity, our users are able to prevent vulnerabilities from the early stage of development, minimising the greater damage caused in the later stage of production.