A Simulation-based Education Platform for Security Investments Through Culture and Knowledge Convergence

This document presents a simulation-based education platform, framed as a serious game, designed to improve cybersecurity investment decisions by narrowing two gaps: the economic knowledge deficit among chief information security officers and the cultural divide between security leaders and business management. Built using a Design Science methodology, the work positions the platform as an educational and decision-support artefact rather than a finished or validated solution. Its core components include a cybersecurity capability heatmap rating maturity from 1 to 5 across People, Processes, and Technology, a set of key performance indicators such as maturity ratio, acceptable risk exposure, and Cybersecurity Risk Asset Ratio, a risk register, and an incident cost log.

The prototype calculates these indicators automatically and flags areas as "AT RISK" to guide investment priorities. Stakeholder feedback is reported as having shaped both the KPI thresholds and the game design, reflecting an intent to ground the simulation in practitioner judgment. The platform's intended evaluation context is a food-industry company of roughly €15 million in revenue and 350 employees in northern Greece, where real decision-makers would interact with the tool and real organizational data would feed the simulation.

The scope of the work is narrow and its evidentiary base is preliminary. The evaluation is confined to a single industry and a single case site, and the authors openly acknowledge risks of developer bias and insufficient evidence on whether the platform improves long-term decision-making. No quantitative outcome data are presented, so claims of effectiveness remain unverified. The authors conclude that the platform is a promising educational tool but that further validation is required before its value can be established. The supporting literature spans game-based learning for cybersecurity, the economic valuation of security investment, and design science research methodology, situating the contribution at the intersection of security economics and serious game design.