Leeds Beckett academic, Cliffe Schreuders, thinks it’s a remarkably interesting story. He’s not aware of any other case where someone has stolen, and then returned, so much money. But what’s more interesting to Cliffe is that he believes the heist was probably motivated by technical curiosity – a mindset he encourages in his students.

Cliffe is a reader and lecturer in cyber security and director of the Cybercrime and Security Innovation Centre at Leeds Beckett. Through his online platform Hacktivity, Cliffe provides a safe space for our BSc Cyber Security students to learn how attacks happen and what businesses can do to protect themselves.

Tackling the skills shortage

So, what can organisations do to prevent attacks like the one on Poly Network? It’s simple – companies need to be more proactive when it comes to cyber security. However, something is stopping them.

There is a significant skills shortage in this space. More cyber security experts are desperately needed to help organisations globally follow best practices and build better defences.

Cliffe and the course team are addressing the skills shortage by preparing the next generation of cyber security experts. Cliffe provides our students with unique hacking experiences that allow them to learn how to solve real-life cyber security challenges. This hands-on experience is exactly what employers are looking for when hiring graduates.

Cliffe and the team help students develop the “security mindset” and solve technical problems. How is this software vulnerable to an attack? What could a hacker do to compromise this system and break it? These are just a couple of examples of questions students need to ask when looking critically at different scenarios.

Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2022 findings:

• Approx. 697,000 businesses have a basic skills gap in areas including setting up configured firewalls, storing or transferring personal data, and detecting and removing malware.
• Approx. 451,000 businesses have more advanced skills gaps in areas such as penetration testing, forensic analysis and security architecture.
• The most common roles in demand are security engineers, security analysts, security managers, security architects and security consultants, including ethical hackers.

A safe place to apply skills

Before creating Hacktivity, Cliffe spent endless hours manually setting up individual hacking challenges. Now students can access his innovative platform whenever and from wherever they want.

Unique to Leeds Beckett, Hacktivity randomises hacking challenges allowing students to have unique and replayable experiences. This means it provides endless real-life challenges.

For the last five years, the platform has been a major part of the cyber security course, both improving student experience and boosting practical skills.

Play the game to get marks

Every cyber security module has a Capture the Flag element. This involves students being given a problem to solve and being rewarded with a virtual flag – and marks for the module – when they accomplish the task. This could be as simple as breaking down an encrypted message to more complex challenges such as attacking an entire system.

Another example is the Hackerbot, an interactive chatbot. The Hackerbot fires up the software that real attackers would use and runs real attacks on the systems our students are working on.

Learning is interactive and students get instant satisfaction from solving a problem. For those with a competitive edge, there are leader boards for each challenge, and Cliffe encourages them to get involved with national and international hacking competitions outside the classroom.

The commercialisation of the platform

Everything students do on Hacktivity allows them to develop their skills. Students learn how offensive attacks work and how to defend against them. We also teach them to investigate what has happened and to look at all the details.

Cliffe has received £92k of government funding to help launch Hacktivity commercially outside of Leeds Beckett. He thinks it would appeal to individual users such as hobbyists and cyber security professionals or businesses who need cyber security training for their staff.

The long-term vision? He wants to make it bigger and better, and improve it for everyone who is using it.

Stand out to employers

Employers can have confidence that Leeds Beckett cyber security graduates have the practical experience and expertise their business needs. As well as benefitting from Hacktivity, students sharpen their skills in our specialist cybercrime lab and attend a mock courtroom where a real barrister will question them as they testify in fictional hacking cases as professional cyber security specialists would.

During interviews, our graduates can describe what they’ve done, as well as proving they have a solid grounding in four key areas – digital forensics, offensive security, defensive security and investigative security.