Timely Feedback in Unstructured Cybersecurity Exercises
Jan Vykopal, Radek Ošlejšek, Karolína Dočkalová Burská, Kristína Zákopčanová · 2018
Cyber defence exercises are intensive, hands-on learning events for teams of professionals who gain or develop their skills to successfully prevent and respond to cyber attacks. The exercises mimic the real-life, routine operation of an organization which is being attacked by an unknown offender. Teams of learners receive very limited immediate feedback from the instructors during the exercise; they can usually see only a scoreboard showing the aggregated gain or loss of points for particular tasks. An in-depth analysis of learners' actions requires considerable human effort, which results in days or weeks of delay. The intensive experience is thus not followed by proper feedback facilitating actual learning, and this diminishes the effect of the exercise.