Why Traditional Security Awareness Falls Short and the Way Forward

The Human Element: Your Greatest Vulnerability and Strongest Defense

“According to the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 68% of cybersecurity breaches are primarily caused by human action”¹, organizations must move beyond traditional defenses to address this critical vulnerability.

According to Gartner, “By 2026, enterprises combining GenAI with an integrated platforms-based architecture in security behavior and culture programs will experience 40% fewer employee-driven cybersecurity incidents.” ¹

Figure (1): Where Most Employees Fail: Secure Behavior Scorecard ²

ZiSoft’s Comprehensive Offering: From Risk to Adaptable Resilience

ZiSoft by ZINAD meets this challenge head-on with an adaptive, AI-powered platform that continuously updates and fine-tunes each campaign in real time. Unlike static training tools, ZiSoft evolves with the threat landscape, personalizing security awareness to each organization’s unique risks. By integrating cutting-edge AI insights, it transforms cybersecurity awareness from a compliance task into a seamless, proactive defense, ensuring measurable and lasting impact.

Beyond Compliance: Customization for Real Behavioral Change

Traditional security awareness tools, relying on phishing simulations and generic training, struggle to keep pace with today’s rapidly evolving cyber threats. While they meet baseline compliance and audit requirements, they fail to drive real behavioral change.

Key reasons for the risky behavior found in the same survey are shown in the figure below.

Figure (2): Top three reasons why employees behave insecurely ³

This highlights a critical flaw: employees often perceive security compliance as a burdensome extra step rather than an essential practice. To truly secure an organization, awareness programs must go beyond static training to cultivate a security-first mindset. The only real measure of success is a consistent, measurable shift in employee behavior, which traditional, one-size-fits-all approaches fail to achieve.

• ZiSoft: Beyond an LMS, Your All-in-One Awareness Management Solution

ZiSoft by ZINAD bridges this gap with an AI-driven, fully customizable platform that tailors training to individual learners, industry-specific threats, and company theme and culture. One of the key challenges in security awareness is addressing the varying technical expertise across different departments. ZiSoft overcomes this by offering specialized modules that adapt to diverse skill levels, ensuring that both technical and non-technical employees receive relevant training. Unlike passive training, ZiSoft seamlessly integrates security awareness into daily workflows, making security second nature. With six specialized and constantly updated modules (SMS campaigns, Email Tip Campaigns, CSS, Evenue, Cyber Emissaries, Zi-Workshop, LMS, Gamification & comprehensive phishing), ZiSoft ensures an engaging and effective learning experience tailored to each organization’s needs. For example, the CSS module, in particular, is designed to deliver targeted security awareness for technical professionals, providing in-depth insights that align with their advanced knowledge and responsibilities.

Figure (3): showing ZiSoft’s features | ZINAD

ZiSoft offers an all-in-one Awareness Management System, not just an LMS. Backed by continuous research and AI-powered insights, ZiSoft ensures security awareness is not just taught, but ingrained to create real, measurable, and lasting behavioral transformation.

Diverse Engagement Methods: Enhancing Cybersecurity Awareness

Low engagement in cybersecurity awareness programs remains a key challenge for organizations, with 68% of security leaders citing it as a major issue. To tackle these challenges, a multi-method approach is essential. Incorporating gamification, VR, workshops, and targeted communications, such as SMS campaigns and email templates, helps boost participation and retention. Gartner research shows that “the best and most impactful messaging will connect consequences, amplify them with social pressure, springboard off existing beliefs and values, be personally relatable, and ideally fun”4 enhances engagement and makes training more relatable.

Figure (4): Get People to Take Cyber Risk More Seriously ⁴

“The best way to embed values in communications is to use simple, clear messaging that evokes an emotional response. You are looking for powerful imagery, a high-impact sentence or two.” ⁴

The best way to embed values in communications is to use simple, clear messaging that evokes an emotional response. You’re looking for powerful imagery, a high-impact sentence or two.

However, according to SECNORA5, “training methods aren’t effectively engaging employees, which can lead to knowledge gaps and leave organizations vulnerable. To address this issue, a new approach has gained traction: gamified cybersecurity training.” A holistic approach, incorporating techniques such as quizzes, leaderboards, and rewards, further enhances motivation and fosters healthy competition among employees.

ZiSoft by ZINAD: Tailored Cybersecurity Awareness for Every Learner

Human Error: The Knowledge-Action Disconnect

Even when employees pass awareness tests, behavior often remains unchanged. There is a disconnect between security awareness campaigns' goals and their actual implementation, especially when it comes to tracking results and allocating sufficient resources. Despite their understanding of the importance of security awareness, it also implies that organizations may struggle to implement and assess their programs.

• Analyzing Behavior: The Key to Reducing Cyber Risks

There are some behavioral metrics that are measured including phishing click-through rates, regularly updated passwords, and reporting of suspicious activity. It is important to deeply understand human behaviors to mitigate the behavioral risks.

Figure (5):” Baseline Assessment” Module shows the critical areas covered in the assessment | ZINAD

• ZiSoft Baseline Assessment: Domain Coverage & Maturity Insights

ZiSoft introduces its comprehensive “Baseline Assessment” module, which is tailored for the company that brings the ambition into reality. Baseline Assessment covers critical areas such as safe browsing, email security, social engineering, etc. It does not only cover these domains, but also each aspect is covered in questions in addition to generation of a detailed, department-specific report that compares the behavior before and after the assessment to assess the maturity of employees.

Figure (6):” Baseline Assessment” Module shows the maturity of the employees per aspect | ZINAD

Figure (7):” Baseline Assessment” Module shows the maturity of the employees per department | ZINAD

Cybersecurity Perceptions: Rules or Strategic Defense?

Cybersecurity is seen through different perspectives. For many employees, it is seen as the set of rules that they are uncomfortably following in their daily workflow. Organizational leaders, on the other hand, consider cybersecurity as a strategic asset that protects them from possible data breaches and financial losses that could negatively impact the company's reputation.

In contrast to merely achieving compliance requirements, the figure highlights the value of promoting a culture of security awareness and behavior change. This approach recognizes that effective risk management requires not just following rules but also incorporating cybersecurity into employees' daily activities and company culture.

"It is not just about providing guides on avoiding phishing or password management, but embedding a security mindset within the organization."
Keri Pearlson

The Executive Director of the Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan: The Interdisciplinary Consortium for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (IC3) at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

• Empowering Security Champions

This diversity in opinions points out how important it is to tailor cybersecurity approaches to your organization’s unique culture. An awareness security champion must be in each department protecting the employees from human error.

• ZiSoft Cyber Emissaries: Building Champions for Secure Workplaces

ZiSoft’s Cyber Emissaries module empowers risk ambassadors to become true champions. By fully automating security tools, this solution is tailored for your organizations’ defense strategy. They are led by case studies, educate employees about the risks and the way to mitigate them becoming a nature in their work environment.

AWAREA: Engaging Cybersecurity Awareness Tailored to Your Culture

Figure (8): The Four Pillars of Excellence by ZiSoft | ZINAD

ZINAD offers AWAREA, a mobile application designed to improve cybersecurity awareness by providing users with interactive and engaging educational content using ZiSoft functions. The application provides a comprehensive platform for all needs related to cybersecurity awareness, including features like:

• Cybersecurity Awareness Workshops: There are workshops to keep the users up to date on the newest threats and the best practices to mitigate them, covering different topics.
• Culture-Tailored Content: The application offers customized content according to the target audience and company culture.
• Gamification: It improves learning by making training enjoyable and interesting and by encouraging participation with challenges and rewards. These games not only reinforce key security concepts but also encourage friendly competition.
• Cybersecurity News: A dedicated news section provides the latest developments in cybersecurity to keep users updated.

Employees become a stronger line of defense when it comes to their family if tools and workshops are tailored and customized to the company’s culture and target audience. These tools can also be used for personal security. For example, securing home Wi-Fi and safe social browsing for the family.

Generative AI: A Powerful Shield Against Evolving Cyber Threats

Nowadays, Generative AI is altering cybersecurity by providing cutting-edge defenses against boosted sophisticated threats. Standard security systems often find it difficult to keep up with the latest attack methods, particularly spear phishing. Generative AI fills the gap through analyzing large datasets, finding patterns, and recognizing anomalies that traditional methods might neglect.

• Generative AI: The Rising Threat Behind Convincing Phishing Scams

By using generative AI, malicious actors can produce incredibly realistic and personalized phishing emails that follow the writing of well-known senders. These emails trick recipients into sharing confidential data or clicking on harmful links while avoiding detection by traditional spam filters.

Figure (9): Impact and Top Recommendations for SRM Leaders ⁵

• ZiSoft Phishing Module: Realistic AI-Driven Simulations

ZiSoft’s AI-powered tool offers dynamic phishing simulations that are tailored to simulate actual attacks relevant to the organizational culture and employees' roles unlike the common templates that are easily identified by the security gateway. By exposing employees to realistic scenarios, they can better discern and manage real phishing attacks. After each assessment, detailed feedback reinforces learning, while AI continuously adapts future simulations to address observed vulnerabilities. Additionally, campaign data, risks, and incidents are regularly updated to ensure simulations remain customized and aligned with evolving threats.

Figure (10): ZiSoft “Phishing Simulation” Module shows the way it is tailored and customizable | ZINAD

• Suspicious Email Analyzer

Integrated with Outlook, this AI-powered tool analyzes reported suspicious emails, examining language patterns and psychological triggers to determine the likelihood of phishing. This process not only aids in preventing breaches but also enhances the organization’s overall threat intelligence by identifying potential attack vectors.

¹ Gartner Inc., Top Trends in Cybersecurity for 2025, 12 December 2024, G00822766
² Gartner Inc., 4 Tactics for Developing Security Minded Employees
³ Gartner Inc., Infographic: How to Drive Secure Behavior When Security Awareness Falls Short, 12 December 2022, G00780861
⁴ Gartner Inc., 5 Communications Tactics to Get People to Take Cyber Risk More Seriously, 8 August 2024- ID G00816545
⁵ Gartner Inc., The Impact of Generative AI on Security Behavior and Culture Programs, 11 November 2024, G00816736
⁶ The Role of Gamification in Cybersecurity Awareness Training - SECNORA

Source: ZINAD