Last night I attended the SANS@night seminar “Nurturing the Next Gen: Creating Kid-Friendly Challenges for Fun and Mayhem”. The talk was put on by Ed Skoudis, Kevin Johnson, and Josh Wright. Both Ed and Josh presented very interesting ways to get your kids to think analytically and to begin to look at (and enjoy) topics like cryptology and non-base-ten number systems. Ed described in “lively” detail how he constructs scavenger hunts for his and the neighbor’s kids each year at his family’s holiday party. While listening, I remembered that I too have done this. A few years ago, it was Trevor’s birthday and we bought him a gift that he would have never expected we would buy (a gaming console). So rather than just simply wrap the gift and give it to him at his birthday party, I (like Ed) made finding it a challenge; I created a “Quest” to find …keep reading …