The large numbers of people flocking to the gaming industry make it a prime target for cybercriminals. Actually, looking at the statistics, you may be surprised to discover that over 3.3 billion people actively play video games, which is about 40% of the world’s population. Now that data has become the new gold, many individuals, including threat actors, are running after it.

And given many gaming businesses are turning to online platforms, the need to ensure safety can never be overemphasized. You don’t want to imagine yourself bearing the costs of recovering from an incident that could have been avoided with the right knowledge. So, if you want to discover a few tips to help you build a strong cybersecurity culture and avoid traps, you’ve just come into the right place.

Why do you need to pay attention to cybersecurity?

You’ve perhaps heard about DDoS attacks. They usually attempt to disrupt a server, service or network by flooding it with traffic to overwhelm the target’s infrastructure and make it unavailable for legitimate users. Studies have revealed that they are most prevalent in gaming, accounting for nearly half (49%) of all DDoS attacks.

According to Security Magazine, these threats increased by 46% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. In another place, SecurityBrief UK noted a 94% rise in web attacks against games within the same period. Structured Query Language injections ranked as the major attack method, with more than 700 million occurrences highlighted.

As you can see from these statistics, if you don’t pay critical attention to security, you could actually be the next victim. But no one wants that, especially now that recovering from such incidences is becoming a great burden to bear. In fact, do you know that you can spend up to $4.45 million, with some studies expecting the global crime cost to increase by 15% annually over the next few years?

The power of employee training

Remember, attacks could come from different sources—employees, online gamers, top management and so on. So, you want to build an environment where every stakeholder feels that cybersecurity is their concern. This is beyond merely having a policy that people have zero motivation to enforce.

Surprisingly, a study by the Chief Executive noted that two-thirds of cyber breaches resulted from employee negligence. And as if that is not enough, approximately 95% of data breaches stemmed from human error or behavior. Assuming one of your employees left the company’s laptop on a train, you can imagine what could happen if it fell into the hands of a malicious hacker.

In other cases, extortion attempts could happen when someone tries to impersonate senior executives. Since Onfido has noticed that deepfake attacks happen every five minutes, you can be sure that the gaming sector is not exempt.

To avoid such incidences, you can:

• Train and encourage employees to only use approved software and strong passwords
• Encourage employees to reply to senior executives in fresh emails rather than just pressing the reply button
• Conduct periodic checks to check whether sensitive data is only available on a need-to-know basis

Take advantage of emerging technologies

Contemporary technologies like AI can really help when it comes to building a safe and secure ecosystem. We have already seen that the number of attacks is really increasing, so handling some of them in real time is a challenge. To make matters worse, threat actors are also taking advantage of these technologies to improve their approaches. That makes some attacks, especially AI-based phishing scams, hard to detect.

But that does not leave us without hope. AI, as you know it, has a great computational ability that can help detect fraudulent activities in real time and even highlight discrepancies that might escape the human eye. In fact, it is the reason why, according to Biocatch, about 73% of organizations are already using AI-based fraud detection mechanisms.

And in the gaming industry, where many threat actors target, such efforts can really come in handy. Plus, when employees notice such cybersecurity commitments, they can become more motivated to play their part in the game.

The benefits of a good reputation

Never forget that building a strong cybersecurity culture not only improves safety but also reputation. With many companies launching into the sector, operating a gaming business has become quite expensive. You will need to do more to acquire new players, which could actually result in spending at least five times more than retaining existing ones.

But if players notice your commitment to cybersecurity, most of them could be drawn to your platform. After all, who wants to participate in an environment that compromises their security? As the industry gets more competitive, you can take advantage of such approaches to differentiate yourself from competitors.

Parting shot

No one disagrees with the fact that online scams affect almost every aspect of our contemporary world.  So, it shouldn’t be surprising that, according to Dark Reading, about 89% of gamers expect developers to pay critical attention to cybersecurity issues.

Thankfully, technologies like AI have just the right infrastructure to help us with this. AI has an unusual computation capacity that can help detect fraudulent activities in real time. Plus, focusing on employee programs that encourage them to participate actively in cybersecurity efforts can really help build a strong culture.