This blog dives into the evolving threat landscape shaped by artificial intelligence and shows why your cybersecurity training needs to do more than inform. It needs to engage, challenge, and prepare your people for the reality of modern attacks.
Phishing emails are no longer clumsy. CEO fraud doesn’t feel fake. AI makes every message sharper, every video more convincing, and every lie harder to spot. If your awareness training still feels like a checklist, your people are playing a game they already lost.
In 2018, two employees at Pathé Netherlands transferred €19 million after receiving urgent emails from their “CEO”. No malware. No breach. Just a believable lie, a tight deadline, and misplaced trust. If that sounds like a movie — it was. One the attackers wrote. And the team fell for it.
This case isn’t rare anymore. It’s normal. And AI is only making it worse. With deepfakes, cloned voices, and generative phishing, attackers don’t need to break in. They just need to be believable for one moment.
At Phantom’sLab, we use AI inside our own game based learning. We create scenarios that feel personal: a fake invoice from your finance director. A voice note from your actual CEO. A Slack message that seems just real enough.
We don’t make you click through slides. We drop you inside the story. When awareness feels like a movie, it finally leaves a mark.
Because when people say “it felt like a movie,” they mean it felt real enough to act on.
Automation makes us move fast, but security needs us to stop and think. That’s why modern training must focus on critical thinking, decision making, and psychological manipulation.
We designed our training like a story driven escape room, because in a real cyber attack there is no pause button. You spot a fake signature. You hear a voice that sounds too perfect. You have five minutes to decide. That pressure is not just thrilling, it is functional. It builds instinct, speed and team coordination under stress.
Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot boost productivity, but they also flood the workplace with overconfidence. Just because AI helps you write emails or code does not mean it protects you from deepfakes, fake logins or manipulated messages.
This blog is written by Joris van den Bergh, Founder & Game Architect at Phantom’sLab. What started as his biggest creative project has grown into a Gold Medal‑winning solution at the Serious Play Awards 2025. Now he’s on a mission to rewrite cybersecurity awareness as entertainment people want to play — and never forget.
By combining experience, reinforcement and culture, we equip organizations to stay ahead of AI‑driven threats. Because when teams don’t just learn cybersecurity but live it, they transform into the strongest line of defence.
