This article details how the points system works in the Secure Code Warrior® Knowledge Platform to increase engagement and measure your team's secure coding prowess in a gamified way.

• Training Mode
• Tournament Mode
• Assessment Mode

Training Mode

Training Points are the unit of score in Secure Code Warrior. Training Points are earned by completing missions in the Training Ground. The total of all earned points is called the Points Score and is the major contributor to leveling-up a Players Security Maturity to earn certifications and bragging rights.

How are experience Points calculated?

The possible number of Points earned for each challenge is determined by the Secure Code Warrior Security Competency Algorithm Metric or SCAM, much like the famous Google Algorithm for search. SCAM calculates a number of factors such as the; Playing Stage, Challenge Difficulty, Application Type, Hint Used, and Failed Attempts (or guesses!) to derive the Players Accuracy, Confidence, and Points.

What impacts Accuracy?

Accuracy is calculated by dividing the number of correct attempts by the total of both incorrect and correct attempts and multiplying that by 100.

Accuracy = (# Correct Challenges /# of attempts) * 100 

For example: a Player answering everything correctly the first time will have a high Accuracy while a Player that answers incorrectly or 'guesses' more often would have a lower Accuracy score.

What impacts Confidence?

Confidence is a ratio between the total number of Hints available and those used.

For example: if a player doesn't use any Hints they'll have a high Confidence score. Players who frequently use Hints will have a lower Confidence score.

How is Time measured?

Challenge Time Played is the amount of time a player has spent actively in training. The time is tracked once a challenge has started and stopped once they submit an answer. If the player navigates away from the challenge without submitting an answer or is inactive (ie. no mouse movement, keyboard interaction, or touch gesture) for more than 5 minutes, the time spent on that specific challenge is discarded.

Team Managers and Company Administrators can also see the total time a player interacts on the platform in Learning Resources (Videos), Training, Assessments, Tournaments. This is referred to as Time Spent. Time Spent is determined by monitoring the active Playing mode every 30 seconds. If the player navigates away from the platform (closes the Browser window or switches Browser tab) or is inactive for more than 5 minutes, the time spent is discarded.

Tournament Mode

In Tournament Mode players compete against each other to see who can score the most points in a given period of time by correctly completing a Challenge Stage. The harder the stage, the higher the potential points available.

A Challenge Stage is defined as; Locate, Identify, Fix, Locate & Fix, or Identify & Fix. Tournament Players can view the detailed scoring rules by clicking on the Information icon to expand the detailed scoring rules as shown below.

There are three preset tournament scoring modes that allow more or less attempts to be played. These can be configured by the Team Manager or Company Administrator when setting up a Tournament.

The following table outlines the scoring for each.

Assessment Mode

Assessments are calculated in a similar manner as Training. Using SCAM, points are normalized to enable a fair comparison across different Language/Framework challenges. The Assessment Score is displayed as a percentage.

The Team Manager or Company Administrator can configure a 'pass/fail' score.