Architectural requirements and computational strategies for mitigating the cybersecurity knowledge-action gap: a systematic review of gamified and adaptive systems
Year: 2026
Type: review
Study design: Systematic Review
Abstract: University students can recognize a phishing email but still click it. We argue that the gap between knowledge and action, which has persisted over decades of awareness campaigns, is a system-design challenge. To address this gap, we systematically reviewed literature published from 2023 to 2026 and extracted computational, architectural, and human-computer interaction (HCI) requirements from 18 eligible publications. Traditional approaches primarily disseminate knowledge but provide limited real-time telemetry and adaptive feedback for behavioral change. Gamification and AI-driven adaptive learning platforms were identified among the most promising approaches in the reviewed literature. Thus, this paper proposes a four-dimensional integrative framework to guide the design of adaptive and gamified cybersecurity training systems for application in higher-education networks.
Institution: Universidad Israel
Topic: Spam and Phishing Detection
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7220859289