Incorporating game elements inspires developers to not only prioritize security, but also do so in an engaging, rewarding way.
Translated from Level Up: Gamify Your Software Security by **Iram Shmueli is the co-founder of JIT and currently serves as Chief Research and Innovation Officer. IRAM is a software engineer and security researcher. He has more than 20 years of hands-on experience in the engineering field and has held senior management positions. The challenge in software development is not just writing, but ensuring security throughout the software development lifecycle.
As with other areas of engineering, we understand that gamification offers innovative ways to address this challenge – whether it's upskilling through platforms like Wilco or learning security best practices through Secure Code Warrior. Gamification allows the entire ecosystem to evolve and develop skills. Gamification isn't just about practicing and upskilling your skills. Incorporating game-like elements into security practices for real-world engineering and production systems encourages developers to not only prioritize security, but also do it in a more fun and rewarding way. This may sound a bit scary, like playing with a production system, but it's not. In an effort to make sure we're ticking the right security boxes, here are some novel ways to embed security through gamification that might feel like a tedious task for developers.
Gamification is not a new trend in security. We have gained some of the most important learnings and knowledge through the CTF (Capture the Flag) challenge and the Red and Blue Team simulations, adding a competitive element to the hands-on learning.
Gamification has become an important way to upskill the industry, and as competitors become more sophisticated, robust security becomes critical to business continuity. Here are some interesting ideas for embedding gamification into engineering workflows to enhance developer enjoyment when doing software security practices.
The first is the interactive challenge. These challenges arise from real-world security concerns. Introduce small, everyday security-related challenges, such as identifying potential risks in snippets, to encourage developers to think quickly and apply best practices while learning about evolving threats in order to respond to threats in real production systems.
By introducing security challenges in the form of quick, daily engagement, gamification keeps security at the forefront of developers' minds, keeping them aware of emerging threats.
In the same way that individual challenges are introduced, you can encourage collaborative problem-solving and peer-to-peer learning through team competitions.
You can do team sprints or other similar challenges for a specific period of time to embed security.
Solving security challenges together fosters a culture of collaboration and adds some healthy and fun competitive spirit.
We all love external motivators, whether it's stars on GitHub, badges and stickers in forums and groups. So why not create a reward system for security?
This makes it possible for developers to earn points, badges, or status by successfully integrating security measures into their ** and to recognize their achievements.
Light or dark mode? Everyone has their own personal preferences, which is why most user interfaces offer both experiences today.
Visual Studio Code and other apps offer a myriad of themes and customizability, and developers love being able to control the environment in which they spend most of their time. Providing a themed and customizable interface is an excellent way to keep training visually engaging and personalized. Engaging visual dashboards track and display safety metrics, creating a more personalized experience that makes progress and achievements visible and rewarding. Just like those games that keep players coming back to unlock the next achievement, it's the foundation and backbone of any gamification project.
Implement a learning system and program where participants can level up after completing tasks, feeling a sense of accomplishment in their achievements and skill level. Each level will provide learners with an ascending channel and gradient experience to track and appreciate their progress.
Similar to how support engineers are often rewarded for the speed and volume of issues they resolve, similar ideas can be adopted to advance safety practices and hygiene standards in your organization. Use leaderboards to encourage a healthy competitive spirit and recognize outstanding contributions to safety by individuals or teams. These leaderboards can be shared across your organization, for example on a dedicated Slack channel every day.
This is another form in addition to the badges and other rewards mentioned above. I've seen recognition programs in organizations for other strategic initiatives, such as "Best Blogger" or "Best Speaker," and even awarded special hoodies or souvenirs to those who earn these titles, giving them uniqueness and prestige.
This can bring great value to an area that should be more strategic for the company than external activities: the security of our systems and products. Rewards and recognition go a long way in informing the team that their contributions are valued.
When we grew up, it took a long time to move up to a different karate band level. Competitive sports have also changed since then, and today there are "intermediate" two-color bands, allowing children and teens to see progress and want to continue to invest in fitness and skill development.
The same goes for learning safety. By ensuring that gamification elements are adapted to a variety of skill levels, from beginners to seasoned developers, you can make security practices accessible and engaging for all – and make it easier to maintain a commitment to learning – as achieving milestones between achievements is easier to reach.
Needless to say, for these ideas to really work for your team, gamification elements should be seamlessly integrated into day-to-day developer workflows. If you don't make an effort to make security practices a natural and regular part of the development process, they won't be adopted.
If you choose some or a few of these ideas, make sure they are tightly integrated with your existing processes and workflows so that you can get the most rewards and benefits.
Ultimately, we want to upskill our developers to deal with the growing threat and attack surface, a task that security engineering teams can't do on their own. That's why it's crucial to keep content fresh, challenges, and scenarios up to date with the latest security trends.
Make sure to introduce new challenges and scenarios to stay engaged and ensure continuous learning to help prevent the next major incident in your production system.
Ultimately, if developers don't adopt gamification, they're missing their goals. As with any new product, process, feature, or initiative, it's important to establish a feedback loop for developers to provide input on gamification elements.
This will help ensure that the platform evolves according to their needs and challenges, aligns with real-world workflows, engages satisfactorily, and makes the results valuable enough.
Ultimately, integrating gamification into software security practices presents an exciting opportunity to elevate the security defense posture of software development teams.
By making security more interactive, engaging, and rewarding, developers are more likely to see security as a fundamental part of their workflow, resulting in more robust and secure software products.
These are just a few examples of how these principles can be applied to a developer's day-to-day workflow in an attempt to uplift security skills in your organization in a way that developers like.