Teaching cybersecurity inside a theme park may seem ironic, but that’s precisely the point according to Kaspersky. With its new Cyber Investigation Centre in collaboration with KidZania, the cybersecurity company is trying to make a usually dry, back-end concern into something demonstrable and memorable for kids in India.
At its core, this new Kaspersky initiative employs role-play as a teaching method. It’s where children step into the shoes of “cyber investigators,” solving simulated cases of phishing, identity theft, and cyberbullying using guided workflows.
Children as young as 6-years-old suit up, sit at dedicated workstations, and work through interactive digital missions that mirror real online threats. The sessions that last about 20 minutes are designed to train children’s instinct as much as knowledge. It helps them understand suspicious links, privacy risks, and learning safe browsing habits.
It’s cybersecurity as a lived experience, according to Jaydeep Singh, General Manager of India at Kaspersky. It’s something kids participate in like playing a game, rather than passively consume in video format.
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“Through a playful, immersive experience, children in India can step into the role of cyber Investigators, learning about the most common risks of the digital world and discovering the best cybersecurity tools that help protect our digital lives. This is what the cyber heroes of tomorrow will look like,” says Jaydeep Singh.
Singh is pretty candid about the urgency of the need this Kaspersky initiative tries to fulfill. “I think, with the number of kids using devices right now, it’s very important for them to start that journey. Look at how things work and spend some time, collaborate, talk to each other.”
The idea is not to replace formal education, but to complement it, emphasises Jaydeep. Bridging the gap between knowing and doing, which is a crucial difference in cybersecurity.
“We’ve been trying to collaborate with academia, education for the last few years. Last year, we did a program with CBSE school teachers. This was to educate the teachers on cyber hygiene. Similarly, we have collaborations with Manipal Institute, IIT Bombay, Chennai, Delhi, on imparting some of the more technical aspects of cyber-threat hunting, etc. So, KidZania is now basically targeting the kids who are now the Gen Alpha, born into the digital world,” highlights Jaydeep Singh.
It’s all down to the immense stakes riding on cybersecurity, and the danger our young and vulnerable population is getting exposed to online. “So, between April 2024 to March 2025, we saw nearly 19 million threats being distributed as gaming applications. This impacted nearly 400,000, and a lot of them were kids. So, they would, by default, become a target for these scamsters.”
For Singh and Kaspersky, that is the key takeaway. Unlike adults, kids need to know cyber hygiene and responsible online behaviour. Because more than any piece of software, humans are the weakest links in the cybersecurity chain. In that regard, the next line of cyber defence might just be six years old and already getting trained.
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