Utilising gamification tools, companies can transform employees from cyber security risks into assets. This opportunity space protects businesses and individuals from cyber threats by teaching smarter digital behaviour in an engaging way, and creates a new market for ethical hackers, hired by companies to find weak spots in cyber networks. Not only does this protect users and create a new market, it overcomes the shortage of cyber professionals.

Human error represents one of the biggest vulnerabilities for cyber security; studies show 95 percent of successful cyber security breaches involve human error. Gamification offers a series of attractive market opportunities for companies to develop cyber security products and services. Simply put, cyber security is not a top priority for most employees relying on digital technologies to perform their jobs, but using mechanics and methods from games increases awareness of cyber security and nudges users into secure cyber behaviour.

Products and Services

The security awareness training market exceeds 1 billion USD in annual revenue globally, and is growing by approximately 13 percent per year. The growing market demand for these products is driven by the persistent increase in the number of cyber attacks. In 2015, the total number of cyber security incidents rose by 38 percent.

Demand drivers in this opportunity space include the increased digital complexity of day-to-day work processes that increase the risk of security breaches. Companies and organisations will continue to demand more and better products for securing their assets and for improving their employees’ digital security behaviour. Developing products and services to meet these challenges is a growing business opportunity for companies in the cybersecurity sector.

Market Size and Demand Drivers

Initiatives are already being deployed around the world for a great variety of purposes. These include delivering health promotion messages regarding NCD risk factors, identifying counterfeit medicines, surveying populations, nudging individuals to rethink unhealthy behaviors, and helping to implement national NCD policies. Moreover, the relative novelty of the mHealth approach, combined with the almost universal reach of the technology, fosters innovation that can be tailored to meet both mass markets and specific needs. Notably, new sensors and technologies capable of conducting, storing, transmitting, and evaluating diagnostic tests through mobile phones are an area of rapid development.

Combined with the advent of big data, these technologies are likely to generate novel applications in the future, potentially showing great relevance to the challenge of efficiently managing medical records and creating more transparent and patient-centered healthcare. Coupled with accelerating rates of high-speed network coverage and rapidly decreasing hardware costs, mHealth approaches to combatting NCDs are becoming uniquely positioned to provide life-saving information and services to all.

Survey Findings

The market opportunity of cyber security games was received with moderate to low enthusiasm across all regions in our 2016 survey. Leaders in Europe are most positive about this opportunity, while respondents in China rate it at the most negatively.

Globally, respondents believe the technological capabilities already exist to make this market opportunity grow, while they perceive the economic and political capacity to be lower. MENA, Sub Saharan Africa, and North America are the three regions where we can expect the market to mature the fastest, as respondents believe the overall capacity is significant enough to enable the market to grow.

Respondents with mid-level management responsibilities are more positive towards the overall capacities to pursue this opportunity than C-level management, which is different from most of the other opportunities.

In North America, leaders see a strong business case in this market opportunity, believing it will have a positive impact on business. Business leaders in Europe are also ready to pursue it, while business leaders in China see a weaker business case in this market opportunity.

The “Other Business” sector is the group that assessed this opportunity to have the greatest ability to positively impact business sectors, while the service industry ranked this opportunity highest with respect to the likelihood of pursuing it.

The financial sector can be expected to actively advocate for the development of this market. From a regional perspective, business leaders in the MENA region will advocate most actively for this market.

This market was surveyed globally in 2016 by more than 5500 leaders from both the public and private sectors. The survey was conducted in collaboration with the research company YouGov. The survey results were originally published in the Global Opportunity Report 2017.