Chapter 2 | Gaming data security and cyber risks

The challenges of capturing, utilizing and protecting data are certainly not new or unique to the industry. Gaming companies currently use data to better understand player behaviors, both on a specific platform or device and across them. This drives gaming companies’ strategic investments and content strategies, enables them to personalize and redesign their games to make them more engaging, and allows them to create targeted in-game advertisements.

As more gaming data becomes available, gaming executives anticipate that this will bring new hurdles. In our survey, 32% said making use of the data their companies collect is a significant challenge today. By contrast, 41% said they believe data management will be challenging three years from now. In this environment, companies plan to revamp their data management skills. For example, 47% of survey respondents cited hiring new employees with advanced skills in data analytics as a top data-related priority.

In addition, gaming data will be increasingly generated through a growing number of devices along the gaming value chain. Fifty-nine percent of the gaming executives we spoke with ranked gaining visibility into gaming endpoints as their top data priority.

Gaming executives recognize:

Another perennial challenge is data security. The growing amount of data collected by gaming companies makes them attractive targets for cyber criminals who seek financial gains or simply want to execute malicious attacks on companies or players. Typically, cyber criminals are looking to obtain personal information such as credit card numbers, but they also steal virtual goods, sell fake non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and carry out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on gaming platforms. Some sell virtual goods, such as “hacks,” that purport to improve a gamer’s performance, but they are, in fact, Trojan horses for ransomware. Cyber risks will continue to intensify as gaming companies become more involved in selling, buying, trading or holding consumers’ digital assets. Security breaches do not only severely damage gaming companies directly, but they could also greatly slow the move to the metaverse by gaming and non-gaming companies alike.

Gaming executives are well aware of their obligations to protect information and validate that games and platforms are safe environments. When we asked them about their challenges around data strategy, many cited cyber risks. Forty-seven percent of respondents say that mitigating cyber risks is a key challenge today. However, looking out three years, that response rate jumps to 58%. Nevertheless, these executives are confident that they will be able to manage cyber risks. They say their companies are taking (or plan to take) steps to mitigate cyber risks, including hiring employees with advanced cybersecurity skills (47%) and partnering with third-party cybersecurity firms (39%).