In the new educational game “Critical Chains,” players take on the role of attackers and attempt to paralyze pharmacies—for example, either directly or indirectly through suppliers, infrastructure, and software ecosystems. This reveals the vulnerabilities of modern supply chains and highlights opportunities for better protective measures.
“Over the past 24 months, there have been at least eleven known major software supply chain attacks, four of them in 2026 alone. In some cases, millions of installations were affected—per attack. And those are just the software attacks. This is a highly topical issue and will unfortunately continue to occupy us for some time,” notes project leader Prof. Dr. Marcus Gelderie, who teaches and conducts research in the field of IT security at Aalen University of Applied Sciences. The goal is to empower companies to ask themselves the right questions: Where am I vulnerable? Where do I need to start to protect myself?
Why a game about supply chains?
The new educational game deliberately adopts the attacker’s perspective to raise awareness of real-world risks among business owners, security managers, and employees. It reflects the reality in which outages rarely occur in isolation, and often a single vulnerability at a service provider is enough to affect entire industries. “Those who experience attack vectors firsthand understand defensive measures more quickly and deeply. This allows critical scenarios to be tested safely and discussed as a team,” says Gelderie. Players navigate a simulated world with various stakeholders and choose different attack vectors to experience the impact on the supply chain. There are two core perspectives: a direct attack on the company and an indirect attack via dependent stakeholders, software, logistics, or energy supply. These two perspectives highlight just how closely companies are intertwined and how quickly disruptions in supply chains can lead to real-world outages.
Play for free now
The BAKSecure educational game is aimed at employees and owners of small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as anyone interested in cybersecurity and supply chain risks, regardless of industry or prior knowledge. All BAKSecure games are available free of charge and without registration at www.baksecure.de/spiele. For more information about BAKSecure, visit www.baksecure.de.
Info: BAKSecure is a project of the Technical Academy of Schwäbisch Gmünd and Aalen University of Applied Sciences. The project is part of Mittelstand-Digital. Through the Mittelstand-Digital network, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) supports digitalization in small and medium-sized enterprises and the skilled trades.
Photo: Prof . Dr. Marcus Gelderie (2nd from right) and his project team are delighted with the release of the new educational game “Critical Chains.”
Photo credit: © Aalen University of Applied Sciences | Stefanie Söser
