A review of taxonomies of cybersecurity educational games

Abstract

Presently, cybersecurity awareness is an essential skill expected from all audiences that range from small children to older adults. Moreover, serious games and gamification has been used in cybersecu- rity education for years with interesting results. Currently, there exists a multitude of cybersecurity games that target different cybersecurity skills and topics using a wide range of game genres and approaches. With the existence of such a variety of games, a classification taxonomy is of the utmost importance. A proper classification taxonomy can allow researchers to gauge the existing cybersecurity games as well as to place their proposed cybersecurity games in the pantheon of existing games. Thus, this research work conducted a literature review aimed from 2018 to 2023 to examine the existing taxonomies for cybersecurity educational games. It was observed that there exists several taxonomies for cybersecurity games but comprehensive taxonomies especially aimed at cybersecurity serious games are lacking. Moreover, the review also identified some potential taxonomy candidates that are used in education games in general but are yet to be used in the scope of cybersecurity. Lastly, the review suggests an extended and unified cybersecurity educational game taxonomy by merging some of the available educational game taxonomies.