Design and Evaluation of a User-Centric Gamified Cyber-Security Awareness Framework with Behavioral Change Impact Assessment

The rapid advancement of technology has resulted in increase in cybercrime activities on organization and individuals, which has intensified nowadays. Cybercrime incidents in India have sharply soared from 10.29 lakh in 2022 to 22.68 lakh in 2024, with financial losses touching ₹22,845 crore that is a 206% year on year increase. Regardless of the increase in investments of strengthening the security infrastructure, these numbers continue to increase due to ineffective management of human-related challenges. Traditional methods of conducting cybersecurity awareness sessions are unable to engage the participants, rendering such sessions ineffective. The existing solutions are developed to provide cybersecurity awareness through phishing simulations, content libraries and gamified engagement, but have several limitations. A training platform has been developed using Design Science Research methodology, incorporating skill-based segmentation training along with a comprehensive reporting mechanism highlighting the overall performance of the user and providing recommendations to enhance their approach towards real time incidents. As per the findings, knowledge gain of 30.0 percentage points in threat identification ability, a System Usability Scale score of 71.83, along with an engagement mean of 4.08 out of 5.00, confirming the platform's effectiveness as an interactive training tool.