It’s 2 a.m. when the chief information security officer (CISO) at a major telecommunications firm wakes up to an urgent alert: a large-scale cyberattack is underway. Networks are compromised, disrupting essential services that support national security – everything from emergency calls to financial transactions is now at risk. The CISO’s phone won’t stop ringing with questions from security operations, government agencies, customers, and executives, all demanding answers.
In a crisis like this, the main challenge is how people will work together. Can diverse stakeholders from public and private sectors, each with unique priorities, come together quickly when every second counts? Or will mistrust and poor communication delay potential responses, worsening the impact of the cyber-attack? This isn’t a test of technical skills; it’s a measure of partnership resilience, the very backbone of national cyber defense. In that moment, do you trust your team and your partners in government and industry to come together, to respond to the threat quickly?
This tension shows the need for a fresh approach to incident response training. Traditional tabletop exercises can lack the realism, engagement and urgency required by real-world cyber crises, leading to slower response times and fragmented collaboration. Gamification, the use of game-like mechanics and interactive simulations, transforms these exercises by creating immersive, high-pressure scenarios. For instance, in Canada’s “Operation: Defend the North” exercise, government, industry, and academia unite to simulate a large-scale cyber-attack. This collaborative and dynamic tabletop exercise helps develop incident response expertise but also builds trust among diverse stakeholders to support coordination efforts when real threats emerge.
The Problem: A Trust Deficit in Crisis
The Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack in 2021 exposed several gaps in how the public and private sectors respond to cyber incidents. Three key challenges emerged from this incident:
1. Communication Gaps:
During the Colonial Pipeline incident, insufficient information-sharing protocols delayed decision-making. This lack of real-time communication led to confusion and lost valuable response time. Analyses from federal agencies indicated that earlier and more coordinated information exchange could have improved response efforts.
2. Mismatched Goals:
During the incident, diverging priorities among the stakeholders became apparent. Colonial Pipeline’s immediate goal was to restore essential services for millions of consumers as quickly as possible, while federal agencies prioritized national security, focusing on tracking and prosecuting the attackers. This disconnect between short-term operational needs and long-term security objectives complicated coordination and decision-making.
3. Cross-Sector Training Exercises
A major challenge was the lack of comprehensive, cross-sector tabletop training exercises. Without realistic, multi-agency simulations, stakeholders were unprepared for the multilayered coordination required during a real crisis. This resulted in confusion over roles, communication channels and decision-making authority.
The Consequences of a Fragmented Response
Fragmented responses occur when crisis teams lack well-defined relationships, standardized communication channels and joint training. The Colonial Pipeline incident illustrates this problem, showing that without coordinated efforts, response times lengthen and the overall impact worsens, such as:
- Prolonged downtime: Hours or days of halted operations can cripple both the economy and public safety.
- Financial losses: High direct costs (e.g., ransom) and indirect hits (e.g., reputational).
- Eroded confidence: Customers, citizens and partners lose confidence in an organization’s ability to safeguard services.
By strengthening communication, aligning goals and conducting integrated training, future incident responses can develop the trust needed to protect services.
Enter Gamification: Building Trust Through Play
Gamification incorporates competition, real-time simulations and reward systems into cyber exercises. However, its main value lies in how it transforms these exercises into trust-building experiences through:
- Shared challenges, shared victories: Participants in red team vs. blue team simulations learn that success depends on open communication, where everyone must work together to defeat the attackers. This mutual reliance encourages relationship building and respect across organizational lines.
- Collaborative role-playing: Role-based scenarios (executives, legal advisors, security analysts) place public and private sector stakeholders in a realistic crisis. By navigating tough decisions like whether to disclose a breach or to pay a ransom, teams gain insight into each other’s pressures and constraints.
- Transparent feedback loops: Gamified platforms feature real-time dashboards showing team performance, threat status and metrics. This visibility motivates participants and encourages open dialogue about what worked, what didn’t, and why.
Spotlight on Canada’s “Operation: Defend the North” Exercise
The ISACA Vancouver (Canada) Chapter is a participant in “Operation: Defend the North,” a gamified exercise that simulates a large-scale cyber incident targeting a critical industry (from energy to healthcare). The overall goal of this exercise is to enhance cybersecurity knowledge, improve incident responder expertise and elevate overall cyber readiness.
In Practice: How It Plays Out
In “Operation: Defend the North,” participants from government, industry and academia are assigned specific roles, such as security operations, communications, risk management, and executive decision-makers, and respond to a simulated cyber-attack in a coordinated manner. The exercise guides participants through the key steps of incident response: detection, analysis, containment, eradication and recovery. Using collaborative tools and real-time updates, this tabletop exercise replicates the pressure and urgency of an actual crisis and shows the benefits of gamification, which include:
- Live-fire simulations: Real-time attack scenarios push both public, private and academia sectors to collaborate under pressure. Seeing the immediate consequences of missed alerts or delayed decisions develops a sense of urgency and shows the value of teamwork.
- Cross-pollination of expertise: Security specialists from industry collaborate with government policy experts and academic researchers. The result is a knowledge exchange that blurs the lines between “public” and “private,” bringing everyone together, under a common purpose.
- Long-term trust building: Beyond the adrenaline rush, “Operation: Defend the North” includes debriefs and post-exercise feedback sessions where participants analyze results, discuss vulnerabilities and propose improvements. These sessions lay the groundwork for cooperation and open channels of communication that last long after the exercise ends.
A United Front Through Gamification
Cyber threats don’t respect boundaries. By using gamification in exercises like Canada’s “Operation: Defend the North,” nations can unify their public and private sectors under a shared mission: defending critical infrastructure and safeguarding the public.
When done right, gamification is a powerful trust-building approach. It empowers diverse stakeholders to learn side by side, empathize with each other’s viewpoints, and collaborate with confidence when an actual incident occurs. With today’s high-stake digital landscape, that level of unity can make all the difference between a contained incident and a national crisis.
