Entrepreneurship in Cybersecurity

Game Logo

Logo designed by Molly Revak

Elevator Pitch for Cosmic Intrusion

Images from the Game

Photos designed by: Mike Bradley

Reflection Essays (the process)

Reflection Essay 1:

As soon as I learned who was in my group, I immediately reached out to all my group members requesting to meet up via Zoom to start the brainstorming process. I was able to get ahold of all the members but one, but with the professors’ help, I was able to get the member’s email and we planned for all of us to meet later that week. 

For the meeting, I created a schedule to help everyone prepare for the gathering and to also give the meeting some structure. We started the meeting with a quick icebreaker to help with the awkwardness of meeting strangers online. For me, it helped ease the tension of the situation and made me feel more comfortable. To officially start the collaboration process, I reintroduced the meeting goals and purpose to let my teammates know what to expect from this gathering. They are as follows:

In this meeting, we aim to achieve the following:

1. Brainstorm freely -generate creative ideas by following the design thinking model. 

2. Narrow down possible ideas for entrepreneurship.

As a group, we wanted to give everyone a chance to speak freely about their ideas and concepts. We first started with Mike who had the idea of creating an entrepreneurship by utilizing the AAA security framework that controls access to computer resources, sets policies, and aids in audits. Then Rebecca gave some insight into the idea as she works for Amazon and explained how the company uses the AAA framework in their physicality. Michael unfortunately did not make it to the meeting as he was stuck in traffic. When it was my turn to share some thoughts I had, I first mentioned starting a YouTube channel to help educate the public about different privacy and terms of agreements that users must agree to, to gain access to different applications and platforms. Then I shared another idea of creating a public education strategy aimed at imparting essential knowledge to elementary students and beyond.

Overall, the group liked the idea of creating a public education approach to cybersecurity. We came up with ideas to create computer games to help facilitate the learning process. 

Reflection Essay 2:

Today our group meeting was about revising our business proposal. We had just gotten our grades back and the professor gave us much feedback on our current endeavor. She pointed out holes we had in our proposal such as that we didn’t have a clear business plan and had trouble narrowing down our targeted audience. Our idea was too broad, and we needed to refine our idea to something more specific. 

We first went over the feedback the professor gave us to get a clear understanding of what aspects of our idea needed attention. We recognized that we needed to reconfigure the problem and provide supporting evidence to help represent the problem in data. The problem we have now identified is a clear lack of cybersecurity awareness, which is particularly pressing due to the prevalence of social engineering attacks as the primary attack vector. We have devised a solution by creating a digital escape room software application and a corresponding website to tackle this issue. Originally, we had aimed our content at children. However, we have now expanded our target audience to encompass everyone by adopting an E for Everyone game rating. The targeted audience is still children, but the application is adaptable for everyone, no matter what age. We plan on assessing our game on a hosting site like Streamline to gain insight into how popular the game is and where it might need improvements. 

The next meeting is next week with the professor to go over our revised vision and to get feedback from her on how to best move forward. As a group, we are feeling a little overwhelmed, but are ready to see where this redirection will take us. 

Reflection Essay 3:

Today we had a great meeting with the professor about the new direction we are taking with our businesses. In the meeting, Mike provided great information about possible legal issues and went over the game ratings we are aiming for our game. Professor Porcher mentioned including new versions of the game as time goes on due to the nature of social engineering attacks ever evolving.  After the meeting, I drafted a new proposal with the new direction we are now taking. I shared it with the group and asked for their input. The only member that added to it was Mike. He added great information about possible barriers we would run into. 

November 11^th -Started on paper. November 14^th -Worked on paper and created questions to go over in the next meeting with the group. 

November 16^th -Had a group meeting where Mike and I brainstormed key elements of the game and crafted the outline for the game description. 

November 17^th– Created a game description and posted it on Canvas under group discussions so my team members could look at it and provide any input. 

November 21^st– Had a group meeting and Mike went over the information about game ratings that he found and the images he created for our game. I went over my game description and the group liked what I had come up with. 

November 23-26 -worked on my paper. 

November 29^th – Started on presentation pitch notes and designed a game logo for the business. I shared the document with the group under the discussion tab.

November 30^th -Had a meeting with the group to go over other details for our project such as our first quarter budget and the cost of the game. After the meeting, I worked on my presentation pitch video.