Phishing Simulation as a Proactive Defense: A Customizable Platform for Training and Behavioral Analysis

Phishing is one of the most persistent threats, but a lot of awareness programs still use generic, static training. This paper fills in the gap identified above by existing studies through the introduction of a phishing simulation platform that provides personalized, role-based simulation with real-time behavioral tracking. It is a multi-channel delivery (Email, Short Message Service (SMS), (WhatsApp) and can dynamically generate messages using placeholders to simulate realistic attack scenarios. User interactions are visualized on an integrated dashboard to let organizations judge the individual’s risk and provide immediate awareness feedback. Due to ethical restrictions, real user testing could not be performed, and the system was tested using simulated data found to work with a cloud-ready front end. The solution shows great potential for being adopted by enterprises due to its potential to adopt an approach towards cybersecurity training in a more adaptive and engaging way.