Play it safe the fun way! The ProSiebenSat.1 AWS GameDay 2022

Even though 2023 has already started — we are still taking the chance for an exciting event recap that we took part in December.

What better time can there be than the quiet time just before Christmas to do one or the other training? Here at ProSiebenSat.1, we used that time to learn about cloud security by hosting our second AWS GameDay.

We invited players from all German subsidiaries of ProSiebenSat.1 like Jochen Schweizer/mydays, Joyn, Stylight, you name them. A total of 40 players eventually signed up for the event which was held in a hybrid mode with some people joining on-site in Unterföhring but most of them playing remotely. We were happy to welcome eight players in our offices of which four colleagues from Jochen Schweizer/mydays were never in the headquarters before.

There could have been more people joining on-site if there wasn’t a snowstorm ongoing in the Munich area which convinced a lot of people to stay at home. So we had two teams sitting together in the office and ten teams joining forces remotely. To encourage networking, we mixed and matched teams across divisions so in most cases the team members never worked with each other before — and often didn’t even know each other before.

If you don’t know what an AWS GameDay is, AWS explains it like so:

[A gameday] is a collaborative learning exercise that tests skills in implementing […] AWS solutions to solve real-world problems in a gamified, risk-free environment.

The players were challenged with the Security Legends GameDay. In this setting, the teams are new hires of a fictitious company named Unicorn.Rentals. During their first day on the job, they are faced with several security misconfigurations and ongoing attacks on their services.

The event began with a briefing on the rules and objectives of the game, followed by a warm welcome of the infamous CTO of Unicorn.Rentals. After distributing the teams’ credentials to their temporary AWS Accounts, the game could start.

As the game got underway, each team worked together to identify and fix security vulnerabilities within a pre-configured environment. The tasks to solve ranged from fixing actual code, over configuring firewalls to executing security forensics. The competition was fierce as teams battled it out to see who could secure their systems the fastest.

As the game drew to a close, three teams engaged in a neck-and-neck race which was eventually won with only a few points ahead. Congratulations to the lucky winners in the Unicorns’ Dream team around Ezgi and Alexey from Seven.One.Entertainment Group, Filippos from Yieldlab, and Felipe from Joyn. However, the real winners of the day were all of the participants, who had the opportunity to learn about AWS security features and practice their skills in a fun and engaging way.

Overall, the AWS gameday Security Legends GameDay event was a resounding success. It was a great opportunity for our company and subsidiaries to come together and learn about an important topic while also having some fun. We hope to host similar events in the future and encourage all of our employees to participate.