Escape the Boring: Amy Stokes-Waters on Engaging Awareness

When Amy Stokes-Waters realised traditional cyber awareness training wasn’t landing, she didn’t tweak the slides. She built a game. What started as a one-off weekend project became The Cyber Escape Room Co, a business turning heads (and turning people into hackers) across the UK and beyond.

In this episode, Amy joins Ant for a brilliant, funny, and straight-talking conversation about disrupting the stale world of compliance-based training and replacing it with something people actually want to do.

Expect brutal honesty, memorable stories, and loads of laughs as we cover:

• Why annual training isn’t working – and why "tick the box" exercises don’t lead to behaviour change
  
  
• The power of play – how escape rooms create moments that stick and get people asking questions after the session
  
• Letting people be the attacker – flipping the script to make learning immersive, emotional, and fun
  
  
• Marketing tactics for awareness – from brand voice to omnichannel campaigns, what security can learn from Coca-Cola
  
  
• Champions, scalability and authenticity – building internal advocates and staying true to your tone, even in financial services
  
  

You’ll also hear:

• The escape room horror story Amy learned from
• Why she built a fake lingerie website to teach cyber lessons
• How a school session at “Hogwarts” led to faculty asking about password managers
• What’s next for escape rooms, including expansion to the US and into the world of OT security

“Training in a box, never tick a box.”

This one’s packed with practical takeaways for anyone trying to make security engaging.

Connect with Amy on LinkedIn and check out cyberescaperoom.co to learn more.