Note from the AFA President: CyberVille!

AFA Members, Congressional staff members, civic leaders, DOCA members, 

AFA’s National High School Cyber Defense Competition – CyberPatriot – is making great progress on several fronts, and I want to bring you up to date on a particularly fun one: AFA’s Facebook cyber game called: “CyberVille”.

As of today, any Facebook user can access it by logging on to Facebook, and then navigating in a browser to http://apps.facebook.com/cyberville/. Alternatively, in the Facebook search box, simply enter “Cyberville,” and the game will appear under the “Apps” section, ready for you to click on it and join the fun. 

 

It is important to understand what CyberVille is and what it isn’t. It was fielded as an entertaining “attractant” to CyberPatriot, something that will draw a broad audience to our flagship STEM program. Game players use strategy and a quick hand on the button to repel waves of ugly make-believe cyber attackers who try to hack cell phone systems, bank accounts, and the local electric company. Success is measured by how well a player defends his or her town against evil viruses and cyber attacks, and on how far he or she progresses. The game does a very good job at a concept level of showing how pervasive cyber systems are, and how much is at risk if we don’t practice safe cyber security. And at each level players are offered the opportunity to learn more about CyberPatriot by following a link to our website.

But it is important to note that CyberPatriot is no more a training program on cyber security than the wildly popular Farmville (with its 80+ million players) trains anyone for a career in agriculture. No one will become an Ubuntu wizard by playing CyberVille, nor will anyone be ready to take over as a system administrator because they mastered it. Our strategy is simply to bring many people to a recreational game and then offer them a real challenge—CyberPatriot—by leading them to our website, which the game does at every level of play. We could have generated a training program (which we think would attract very few users). We chose instead to make this game something many, many people (we hope many, many thousands) will want to share. We want it to be the Farmville of cyber, and our success will be measured by how many people we draw to the game and how many of those people “click-through” to our CyberPatriot website.

I hope you circulate it widely, especially among friends, associates, and colleagues who may be active on Facebook, so we are successful with it.

Thank you for promoting AFA’s CyberPatriot: The National High School Cyber Defense Competition.

For your consideration.

Mike

Michael M. Dunn
President/CEO
Air Force Association