HP Cybersecurity

The Stories We Tell

People have always communicated difficult or complex concepts by telling stories. Typically there is a moral to the story, or an explanation of a natural event. Research from Rick Wash at Michigan State University in 2010 showed these folk models or stories could help people communicate cyber security best practices for home computer systems. Ten years later this paper was awarded the IMPACT award from the Symposium on User Security and Privacy (SOUPS) for the research it has inspired, including this project.

This research teaches cybersecurity and usability concepts using examples from wizarding world of Harry Potter. Each traditional cyber definition is matched to a Harry Potter story example that illustrates the concept. In addition to a lecture, the participants see videos and answer questions in a game.

The game can be run as a live campus-wide scavenger hunt using GPS markers on posters. The video content is seen through an Augmented reality app, or from scanned QR codes. The version using a 360 degree panorama map of Hogwarts to deliver the game online was created as part of a Fulbright Scholar project at Kozminski University in Warsaw, Poland.