Mae Khamissa has first-hand experience of how damaging cyberattacks can be.
The longtime co-owner of Omars Shoes on Bayview Avenue received an email two weeks before Christmas in 2022 from hackers who said they had broken into her system and would “shut us down completely” unless she sent them US $30,000 in bitcoin, recalled Khamissa.
Khamissa was able to work with a cybersecurity company to root out the hackers, saving herself money and any more harmful data breaches.
“We are on a better road now but I can tell you two weeks before Christmas, it was a nightmare,” she said. “We were very fortunate that our personal customer phone numbers were not taken somehow.”
“We then realized how many businesses are affected and there’s no help for them, other than filing a report. There’s really nothing available for companies to be able to find help, also realizing how many people don’t report those items.”
Enter “Canada’s first” cybersecurity-themed escape room, according to Mahdi Raza, founder of SiberX, a collaboration between the Town of Aurora and the Markham-based cybersecurity training company.
Raza said the idea behind the escape room was to “gamify education,” making what can otherwise be a dry, topic more engaging and effective as a learning tool.
“When we bring this gamification side to it, people are able to hands-on interact with the actual environment, that’s what makes it actually unique, as people learn differently now, especially in today’s day and age, they can collaborate and team build.”
Raza said the room has already had visitors from Toronto, with a number of “unique organizations” also stopping by. Raza said companies and government agencies have expressed interest in visiting and using the escape room as a learning tool, including the RCMP and CSIS.
He added he expects a big uptick in visitors come the fall, with school classes visiting the escape room.
Aurora Mayor Tom Mrakas estimates he gets well over 100 emails a day, adding around 10 to 15 of those contain malware, phishing or other cybersecurity attack methods.
“More and more attacks are going to happen, and if we can be better prepared as a community, as a business community as residents, the better off we’ll all be,” said Mrakas.
The SiberX Cybersecurity Escape Room is located at 15157 Yonge St. in downtown Aurora.
More information can be found online.
