Add gamification learning to your pen testing training playbook
Organizations that embrace gamification in their pen testing training are better positioned to build and maintain the skilled security teams needed to address evolving threats.
Penetration testing is a critical element of a successful cyberdefense strategy amid the rise of sophisticated attacks. Using gamification can enable organizations to strengthen pen testing programs and remain ahead of threat actors.
The pen testing market is expected to exceed $6.98 billion by 2032, according to SNS Insider. In Verizon's latest "Data Breach Investigations Report," the use of vulnerabilities as an initial attack vector increased by 180% year over year in 2023. That stark statistic alone underscores the importance of having a well-defined pen testing program in place to identify existing vulnerabilities and fully understand business risks.
Pen testing signifies where the rubber meets the road by serving as an accurate situational barometer for aligning security defenses with evolving threats and budgetary realities. However, pen testing programs still vary in efficacy. Ensuring pen testing efforts are effective requires a targeted focus on training and upskilling ethical hackers.
Gamified learning has emerged as a powerful approach to developing critical security skills. This methodology applies game design elements and principles to educational contexts, transforming traditional training into interactive, challenge-based experiences.
Why use gamification for pen testing learning?
Gamified learning creates an engaging environment by incorporating elements such as competition, point scoring, achievement badges and progressive difficulty levels. It motivates participants to develop and enhance their pen testing abilities.
Unlike conventional training methods, gamification taps into natural human desires for achievement, status and mastery, making the learning process more immersive and effective.
This approach is particularly well suited to cybersecurity training, where hands-on experience and practical problem-solving are essential for developing real-world skills.
Challenges of gamification learning
Creating effective gamified learning experiences requires more than just producing flags to be captured, adding points and showing the results on leaderboards. The key is to develop challenges that directly mirror real-world scenarios, enabling participants to build skills they can immediately apply to their jobs.
Not all gamified training is created equal -- the most impactful programs are built on job-relevant skills, maintain high-quality training and effectively scale across different expertise levels. Mixing in a little bit of fun and whimsy goes a long way, too, in engaging the minds of participants and keeping their attention.
One of the biggest challenges is developing a gamification program that engages both newcomers and seasoned professionals alike. While it's relatively straightforward to create either very basic or extremely difficult capture-the-flag challenges, the art lies in fostering experiences that smoothly progress from entry-level to advanced scenarios.
For example, implementing "easy" and "hard" modes for each challenge enables participants to progress at their own pace, while encouraging deeper exploration of complex scenarios. This dual-mode approach gives learners the flexibility to first grasp basic concepts before tackling more sophisticated aspects of each security challenge.
Benefits of gamification learning
The beneficial impacts of gamified training extend beyond traditional pen testing. Modern programs can incorporate elements of web application security, mobile testing, physical security in virtual environments, ransomware analysis and even ethical decision-making scenarios.
For example, participants might need to analyze a compromised system to reverse-engineer ransomware or navigate ethical dilemmas about appropriate responses to security incidents. These varied challenges ensure security professionals develop well-rounded skill sets that adapt to evolving threats.
Gamified training serves as an excellent platform for cross-training, enabling organizations to discover hidden talents and optimize team composition. A digital forensics expert might learn they excel at pen testing challenges, for example. Similarly, exposure to defensive security concepts can make pen testers more effective by understanding how their findings will be interpreted and implemented by cyberdefense teams.
This flexibility helps organizations better distribute skills across their security functions, while improving employee retention through engaging learning experiences.
How to position gamification for success
The implementation of gamified training must prioritize stability and scalability alongside engagement. It requires infrastructure that can handle concurrent users -- whether it's 20 or 20,000 participants -- without degrading the experience. This technical foundation supports various challenge types, while maintaining consistent performance and data integrity, ensuring that learning objectives aren't compromised by technical limitations.
Major enterprises are already seeing the benefits, with some incorporating monthly capture-the-flag events into their training regimens and engaging thousands of engineers in regular gamified learning sessions. The accessibility of free resources, such as holiday-themed security challenges, has made implementation more feasible for organizations of all sizes. However, success requires careful attention to implementation details. Beyond technical accuracy, effective gamified training must maintain high levels of engagement, while ensuring stability at scale.
Organizations should focus on creating challenges that teach practical, job-relevant skills, while maintaining an element of entertainment. The best programs achieve this balance by incorporating creative scenarios and narrative elements without sacrificing educational value. This approach helps maintain engagement, while ensuring participants develop skills they can immediately apply in their daily work. In addition, when security teams participate in shared challenges, they develop better communication and problem-solving skills. Collaborative environments help break down silos between different security functions and encourage knowledge sharing across the organization.
As cyberthreats evolve, organizations need security teams that can adapt and grow continuously. Gamification offers a proven formula for developing critical skills and creating an engaging learning environment that promotes continual improvement.
Ed Skoudis, president of SANS Technology Institute, is founder of SANS Penetration Testing Curriculum and Counter Hack.
