ARI is an educational first-person puzzle escape room game designed to teach good cybersecurity practices to all audiences. Our goal is to create an enjoyable learning experience through interactive gameplay while simultaneously providing a robust cybersecurity education. ARI will provide insight into the level of knowledge students or employees have and gain as they progress through the levels of the game, and it won’t break the bank in the process.
Human error is often the biggest threat to cybersecurity. Currently, there exist few teaching software applications designed to prevent cybersecurity breaches due to this. The ones that do exist are often simple, ineffective video modules, or extremely expensive. ARI strives to provide a low cost, interactive, enjoyable, and effective way to teach people about the risks that exist in their day-to-day online activities. By teaching users about concepts like good password development and phishing, ARI aims to help prevent security breaches caused by human error.
ARI is designed for all audiences, but is particularly effective for high school and college students, as well as young professionals.
This game was developed during the fall of 2021 over the span of fourteen weeks. Under the supervision of Marist professors Brian Gormanly (brian.gormanly@marist.edu) and Casimer DeCusatis (casimer.decusatis@marist.edu), a team of ten senior students elected to make this cybersecurity training experience a reality.
Since then, ARI, and a paper regarding its development process, have been presented at the Mid-Hudson Regional Business Plan Competition and later the 14th Annual ECC Conference, where it won the cybersecurity award for best in its category.
Additionally, ARI will be used in a classroom setting with high school students for the first time in the summer of 2022.
Can download the executable and learn more at aricyberthink.com. For those interested in playtesting the game, please consider filling out this survey with your feedback.
Open House Visitor #1
“We have to do a lot of cybersecurity training at work. This would be much more fun and enjoyable”
Beta Tester #8
“I thought it was real good for learning about cyber security!”
Beta Tester #15
“I learned enough about passwords that it made me reconsider my current methods”
Omar Dirahoui (OmarDirah92@gmail.com) - Information Technology Stand-In & Leader
Erin Alvarico (erinalvarico@gmail.com) - Information Systems Stand-In & Producer
Dominick Avitabile (zxcthunder@gmail.com) - Cybsecurity Designer
Liyuan Jin (jonny.jin14@gmail.com) - Computer Science Programmer
Bryan Mah (bmah818@gmail.com) - Cybersecurity Designer
Michelle Maloney (mmaloney11600@gmail.com) - Cybersecurity Designer
Joseph McDonough (josephlmcdonough@gmail.com) - Computer Science Programmer and Cybersecurity Designer
Scott Scherzer (scottyscherzer@gmail.com) - Computer Science Programmer
Brian Sprague (spraguebrian2@gmail.com) - Cybersecurity Designer
Aiden Sweeney (aidansweeney42@gmail.com) - Computer Science Programmer
[SENDHELP] ARI for the game
[SENDHELP] Studios for documentation and presentation material