The 17 best data privacy quiz solutions for employees

Data privacy awareness is essential for any modern organization. With the right data privacy training, employees should learn how to identify which data is important, how to protect it, and what the right response is during a cyber attack.

However, getting your employees motivated to train data privacy awareness is difficult. Because most training solutions are simply long-winded, boring, or both.

That’s where data privacy quizzes and games come in. By adding elements of gamification to data privacy training, employees are intrinsically motivated to learn and retain the information better.

In this article, we’ll guide you through the 11 best data privacy games and quizzes so you can pick the solution that fits your organization best.

Top 17 data privacy quizzes and games

1. Guardey
2. Missing Link
3. The Weakest Link
4. Football Fever
5. Cyber Circus
6. Riskio
7. Cybersecurity Escape Room
8. Cyber Awareness Challenge 2024
9. Backdoors and Breaches
10. Counterintelligence Trivia Twirl
11. Targeted Attack: The Game
12. DataGuard
13. EdApp
14. Jentis
15. Seekho
16. OAIC
17. Hyperproof

1. Guardey

Guardey is a data privacy game for employees. During weekly challenges, users learn all about topics like spear phishing, CEO fraud, and password security — all threats to data security.

The weekly challenges take about 3-4 minutes to complete. If you do well, you make money for your fictional organization in the game. But if get a couple of questions wrong, you’ll lose money and see your reputation tank. This gives the user a sense of what may happen in a real-life situation at work. In the leaderboard, you can see how you’re doing compared to your colleagues, which adds a nice competitive element.

In Guardey’s learning management system, you can track how each employee is doing and add your own custom content. This enables you to add your own data privacy protocols that you want your employees to know about.

Pros

• Weekly training (each challenge takes 4 minutes max)
• Stimulates competition and intrinsic motivation with gamification
• Covers all important data privacy topics

Cons

• It’s not free, but is affordable and comes with a 14-day trial

→ Want to learn more about our data privacy game? Schedule a demo with one of our cyber security specialists.

2. Missing Link

Missing Link is a nice collection of high-quality data security test questions. You’re asked to analyze a phishing email and point out each clue that shows it is a phishing mail. Afterward, you get very clear feedback on what you just saw. This makes for an interesting learning experience.

Phishing is the biggest cyber threat worldwide, but Missing Link only focuses on phishing, neglecting all other cyber risks out there. Besides that, it is a solution that you can only play once — which takes you a few minutes. It’s not a recurring solution training solution for organizations.

Either way, Missing Link is a good solution for a one-time awareness data privacy test for your employees.

Pros

• No costs
• Good questions

Cons

• Only focuses on phishing
• Only for one-time usage
• Not built for organizations

3. The Weakest Link

After the Missing Link, we have now arrived at The Weakest Link.

The ‘Weakest Link’ refers to the human element within organizations, which is often called the weakest link in every cyber security strategy. The game was built by IS Decisions.

It’s a pretty straightforward data protection quiz for staff with tough questions about the right topics. It takes a while to get through, but not longer than an hour tops. It’s a great solution if you want to test the cyber awareness of your colleagues once, but can’t be used for regular data privacy awareness training.

What I like about this game is the immediate feedback you get after answering a question. This gives you the chance to learn fast. The feedback is well-thought-through and well-written.

Pros:

• Effective one-time test
• Immediate feedback
• Challenging questions

Cons:

• Limited gamification elements
• Can’t be used for long-term awareness

4. Football Fever

This game, called Football Fever, was created by an American university. It was specially created for its students but is also free to play by the public.

The game’s story arc is based on an American football team. Why they chose this storyline for a cyber security game is not clear. It’s fun but doesn’t necessarily make the content more relatable.

Pros:

• Free of charge
• Instant feedback after each question

Cons:

• Strange storyline
• Not a long-term solution
• Better for students than businesses

5. Cyber Circus

Cyber Circus was built by the same school that created Football Fever. This time, the storyline is built around a circus. Again, this story arc doesn’t do the possible damages of a real cyber attack justice.

In the game, you can try out different sorts of gameplay. The Hoop Shoot game is one of the more fun ones. After answering a question correctly, you can shoot a basketball.

Pros:

• Free of charge
• The games are fun to do
• Instant feedback after each question

Cons:

• Unrealistic storyline
• Not a long-term solution
• Better for students than businesses

6. Riskio

Not all data privacy games are digital. If you’re looking for a game that gets your entire team in the room together, you may want to consider Riskio.

Riskio is a tabletop game to boost overall security awareness. The game combines real team building and learning. To play, you need about 5 of your employees to join in, including a cyber security expert to guide you through the game.

Playing this game regularly is time-consuming. It takes time to set up, schedule, and play — and most of us simply don’t have that much time left in our schedules. But doing this game every once in a while is recommended.

Pros

• Affordable
• Requires real-life teambuilding

Cons

• Very time-consuming
• You need a cyber security expert present
• Not suitable for weekly or monthly awareness training

7. Cybersecurity Escape Room

If you really want to go all-in with a physical, real-life data privacy game, this escape room by Deloitte may be just what you’re looking for.

During the game, your employees get to unlock a device that was infected with ransomware. To do so, they need to take on challenges that cover topics such as data classification, data sharing, and social engineering.

This way of training is pricey (minimum of $6000 for a day), but you’ll hit two birds with one stone: team building and data privacy training combined.

Pros

• Covers important security topics
• Good for team building
• Fun way of learning

Cons

• Quite expensive
• Not suited for weekly or monthly awareness training

8. Cyber Awareness Challenge 2024

The US Department of Defense also created its own data privacy game. It looks a little outdated, uses long-winded videos, and lacks content about modern cyber threats such as deepfakes. This is especially concerning as the game is called ‘cyber awareness challenge 2024’.

Overall, it’s probably one of my least favorite data privacy quiz solutions on this list.

Pros

• It’s free
• There is a wide range of topics
• The storyline is based on an actual business

Cons

• The videos are very long-winded
• The design is outdated
• It lacks content about modern cyber threats

9. Backdoors and Breaches

Another analog option is called Backdoors and Breaches. It’s a tabletop game with 52 cards containing incident response exercises.

This is a great game to have on the shelf if you run a cyber security team and want to keep each other sharp. However, due to the level of the exercises, it’s not suitable for regular data privacy training.

Pros

• Large number of possible incident scenarios
• Useful for cyber security experts

Cons

• Not made for average knowledge level
• Can only be done in real-time with others

10. Counterintelligence Trivia Twirls

Ah, who doesn’t like old-fashioned trivia twirls? In this data privacy game, you get to spin the wheel to land on a specific data privacy category. Each category gives you a set of questions that are of high quality.

It’s a good game to freshen up your knowledge or test your team’s base level, but can’t be used for regular training. This is because all the categories can be played in about 20 minutes altogether, while effective data privacy training needs to be done regularly.

Pros:

• It’s free of charge
• Spinning the wheel is always fun

Cons:

• Limited gamification aside from the spinning wheel
• Not a long-term solution

11. Targeted Attack: The Game

At Guardey, we firmly believe that video should be avoided in any form of data privacy training. Employees are busy and want to spend as little time on training as they can. And while you can scan text, this is usually hard to do with video. This often results in employees either fast-forwarding through video material or pressing play and doing something else until the video is over.

Either way, there are still a lot of people who look for data privacy games based on video. And for those people, Targeted Attacks is a potential match. The storyline is based on a business, which is a pro, and the acting is better than you’d expect.

During the game, you act as the CISO (chief information security officer, which means you need to take some complex decisions. This means the game may not be suited to train your average employee on data privacy and security.

Pros:

• Free of charge
• Good acting
• Direct feedback

Cons:

• Not suited for average employees
• Based on long-winded videos

12. DataGuard

During this data privacy quiz by DataGuard, you can test your knowledge and learn some interesting data privacy trivia while playing.

This quiz is not necessarily meant for data privacy at work but is also useful for daily life. With only 8 questions, it’s also not built for recurring training.

However, if you want to send your employees a reminder that helps them during life outside of the office, this can be a nice addition to keep them aware and safe.

Pros

• Free of charge
• Short

Cons

• Not created for work-related topics
• Not created for recurring training

13. EdApp

This quiz by EdApp contains about 31 questions, which can be done in about 10 minutes.

After every question, you get in-depth background information to add context. This makes for a fun and quick learning experience.

With just 31 questions and no regular updates, this quiz is a nice way to freshen up your team’s awareness, but not a solution for regular training.

Pros

• Free of charge
• Short
• Immediate feedback

Cons

• Not created for recurring training
• Limited gamification elements

14. Jentis

Jentis offers a quiz data privacy quiz to test your base-level knowledge. The first question is a little odd (’ Who is the inventor of the cookie’), but it’s a fun tool to share with colleagues.

Short quizzes like these can quickly show employees how little they often know about data security. For that purpose, quizzes can be short and to the point.

If you’re looking for a quiz to train your employees regularly, this isn’t what you’re looking for.

Pros

• Free of charge
• Short (8 questions)

Cons

• No immediate feedback
• Limited gamification elements
• Not made for recurring training

15. Seekho

This quiz on Seekho covers a few different data security topics, including:

• GDPR
• Encryption
• CCPA
• Privacy policies

The quiz takes about 10 minutes to complete and has a 70% passing percentage.

It’s quick free test, but you first need to sign up to start playing.

Pros

• Free of charge
• Short (10 minutes)

Cons

• Limited gamification elements
• Not made for recurring training

16. OAIC

In this data privacy quiz by OAIC, the national regulator for privacy and freedom of information in Australia, you can choose three different challenges. Each one takes you through a storyline and asks questions along the way.

I like this quiz a lot because it truly seems to be built on the concept of gamification: direct feedback, relatable storylines, and no filler explainer videos.

After you’ve finished the three storylines, there is no new content, so this solution is not for recurring training. But it’s a nice way to introduce the concept of security awareness within your organization if necessary.

Pros

• Free of charge
• Engaging storylines
• Direct feedback

Cons

• Not made for recurring training

17. Hyperproof

Hyperproof created a quiz that teaches you about which data protection standards your business needs to comply with. This is mostly interesting for business owners in the United States.

During the quiz, you are asked to share which data you’re collecting, which states you operate in, and so on.

Afterward, you get an overview of the data protection regulations your organization may be subject to.

Pros

• Interesting basic info for US business owners
• Free of charge

Cons

• Not a security awareness training solution

What makes a data privacy quiz for employees effective?

There are a few things you need to keep in mind while picking the right data privacy quiz or game for your employees.

First of all, you want to make sure that the solution offers regular training, preferably weekly. A one-time training may boost knowledge, but awareness can only be trained with recurring practice. Even if you only practice for a few minutes per week, your awareness grows exponentially.

At the same time, you want to avoid training solutions that take forever. Employees are busy and don’t have time to spend more than a few minutes weekly on data privacy training.

The more gamification elements such as leaderboards, strong storylines, and badges, the better. It can be difficult to motivate your employees to participate in these games and gamification helps to get them intrinsically motivated.

Last but not least, make sure the game discusses a wide range of topics. Data privacy is an enormously broad topic and many cyber threats should be discussed. Before you decide on a solution, put together a list of all topics that matter to your business specifically. Next, check if the solution covers those topics or offers the option to add custom content.

Improve data privacy awareness with Guardey

If you’re looking for a solution that offers recurring training that employees will enjoy doing, look no further.

With Guardey, employees get weekly challenges about data privacy topics that take 3 minutes to complete. Our solution has proven to keep employees engaged and help develop lasting behavior change.