Just-in-time Training: Turning Clicks into Learning Moments

Every CISO and security leader knows the statistic: up to 95% of cyber incidents are linked to human behavior. Traditional annual or quarterly cyber security training cannot keep pace with today’s threat landscape. That’s why organizations need a new approach.

Just-in-time Training itself is not new, it has long been recognized as an effective approach to embed learning at the moment of need. What makes Keepnet innovative is how we apply AI-driven adaptive learning, intelligent localization, and context-aware detection of warning signs together with proven behavioral science and psychological principles. This fusion ensures not only knowledge transfer but lasting behavioral change. Employees are guided to recognize threats like phishing and smishing in real time, building resilience across the entire workforce using relevant insights at the precise moment of risk.

What if instead of waiting weeks or months to deliver training, organizations could deliver learning at the exact moment of risk?

This is the promise of Just-in-time Training (also known as Just-in-time Learning). This feature transforms employee mistakes into teachable moments, you embed awareness when it’s most impactful, when the employee is emotionally engaged, cognitively alert, and directly confronted with the behavior in question.

Why Just-in-time Learning Works Better

The concept isn’t just intuitive; it’s backed by science:

• Reduced cognitive load: Research shows that presenting supportive information before a task and prerequisite information during the task reduces unnecessary cognitive load and improves skill acquisition. Employees remember more because the learning happens in context (Sweller et al., 2011).
• Higher skill transfer: Studies in clinical and emergency settings show that “just-in-time interventions” improve performance in high-risk tasks. When learners receive JIT coaching immediately before or after a risky task, error rates drop and confidence improves (Sutton et al., 2013).
• Improved recall: The worked-example effect demonstrates that people retain more when they see examples immediately relevant to the task. An employee who just clicked a phishing email will better remember the “warning signs” than if they were told weeks later in a generic module (Sweller et al, 2006).

Introducing Keepnet’s Just-in-time Learning Page

At Keepnet, we’ve taken this proven approach and embedded it directly into our human risk management platform for social engineering threats like phishing, smishing, voice phishing, QR phishing, and MFA attacks.

When an employee clicks on a phishing simulation, instead of being shamed or penalized, they are guided to the Just-in-time Learning Page:

• A positive, empowering experience that frames the click as a learning opportunity.
• A walk-through of the warning signs (also called cues or indicators) they may have overlooked, like unusual sender addresses, urgency in subject lines, or suspicious domains.
• A personalized coaching message that reinforces secure behavior and encourages vigilance moving forward.
• Responsive and mobile-ready design, ensuring employees learn effectively whether they’re at their desk, on the go, or working remotely.

It’s training that doesn’t feel like training. It feels like support.

How Just-in-time Learning Works

Just-in-time learning integrates seamlessly into the workflow, providing bite-sized, actionable information at the moment of impact, instead of traditional, often forgotten, long-form courses.

A Supportive Learning Experience

When an employee clicks on a phishing simulation, they’re welcomed with a positive coaching message, reminding them that mistakes are not failures, but valuable learning opportunities shared by many colleagues. This empathy-driven approach builds resilience and confidence rather than fear.

Personalized and Contextual

The page is fully personalized to the employee (e.g., “Hello James White”) and immediately explains what happened, why it matters, and how to improve next time. This makes learning feel relevant, human, and actionable.

Multi-Language Flexibility

Security awareness is only effective if employees truly understand it. In Cameroon for example, children educated in their native language (Kom language) performed on average 125% better in multiple subjects including math and English compared to the control group educated in English (i.e., 1.25 times the scores of the control group). In Vietnam, 68% of first-grade students in the native language education program reached the "excellent" level, while only 28% did so in non-native language programs (approximately 2.4 times more) (RTI.org). In another study, discussions conducted in the native language were found to be nearly 60% more comprehensive and effective than those in English (Maha A. et.all, 2020).

With a built-in multi-language option, organizations can instantly switch the Just-in-time Learning Page into the employee’s preferred language, from English to Spanish, German, French, Japanese, and more. This ensures that training is accessible, inclusive, and impactful for a global workforce, no matter where they are located.

Seamless Integration into Daily Work

Employees don’t need to leave their workflow or sit through a long training course. Instead, they receive micro-learning in real time, right when the behavior occurs. This maximizes knowledge retention and accelerates behavior change.

Guided Red Flag(Warning Signs) Review

The page walks employees through the warning signs they missed:

• Suspicious sender names and impersonation attempts.
• Lookalike domains that mimic trusted brands.
• Urgency tactics designed to provoke quick action.
• Off-brand URLs or unsafe login links.

By breaking down each missed cue step by step, employees learn to recognize patterns and carry the lesson forward.

Behavior Reflection

The platform highlights the specific action taken (e.g., clicking a link) and contrasts it with better alternatives, such as inspecting domains, hovering over links, or validating urgent claims. This reflection builds stronger decision-making habits.

Next Steps for Continuous Growth

The page encourages employees to:

• Stay Vigilant – Report suspicious emails using the phishing reporter tool.
• Learn from Others – See how colleagues spotted the same red flags.
• Keep Practicing – Face new simulations designed to sharpen skills over time.

Feedback & Engagement

Employees can rate their learning experience and share feedback, creating a loop of continuous improvement for both learners and the organization.

How It Completes Gartner’s SBCP Vision

Gartner emphasizes that by 2027, half of all cybersecurity programs will prioritize behavior and culture transformation over awareness training. This marks a major shift: security success will no longer be measured by training completion rates, but by cultural adoption, employee engagement, and real behavior change.

Keepnet’s Just-in-time Learning Page is designed to deliver exactly that. It operationalizes Gartner’s Security Behavior and Culture Program (SBCP) principles by embedding:

• Behavioral science: Delivering coaching at the precise moment of risk, when employees are most open to learning.
• Cultural reinforcement: Turning individual mistakes into collective lessons that strengthen group norms.
• Feedback-driven engagement: Omni-channel communication also provides a structured way to gather employee feedback, measure sentiment, and understand which messages resonate best. This closes the loop: training doesn’t just teach, it listens. This is important for Gartner’s SBCP approach, which emphasizes iterative, data-driven refinement based on cultural feedback.
• Measurable outcomes – Going beyond awareness to track phishing susceptibility, reporting rates, and cultural indicators, providing CISOs with the proof of transformation analysts and executives demand.

By combining these, Keepnet turns awareness into a living, adaptive security culture, exactly the kind of human-centered transformation Gartner identifies as the future of cybersecurity.

Mapping Keepnet’s Just-in-time Learning to Gartner’s SBCP

Here are the direct correlations, showcasing how our Just-in-time Learning approach effectively supports and enhances the core principles of SBCP.

Table 1: Mapping Keepnet’s Just-in-time Learning to Gartner’s SBCP

With omni-channel communication and structured feedback, Keepnet goes beyond “delivering training” to building an adaptive, measurable security culture, exactly the outcome Gartner’s SBCP model envisions.

Why It Matters

Traditional awareness training often arrives too late, months after a mistake. Keepnet’s Just-in-time Learning ensures coaching happens in the moment of need, when employees are most receptive. The result?

• Faster, lasting behavior change.
• Measurable reduction in human-driven risks like phishing, smishing, quishing, and MFA fatigue.
• Alignment with Gartner’s SBCP vision of embedding security into culture and everyday workflows.

It’s not just awareness training. It’s a Security Behavior and Culture Program in action.

Core Differentiators: What Sets Keepnet Apart

Not all training is created equal. Here’s why Keepnet’s Just-in-time Learning Page is uniquely powerful for global organizations:

1. Behavioral Science at the Core

Instead of surface-level quizzes, Keepnet applies proven learning psychology, reflection, reinforcement, and emotional engagement, so lessons stick. Employees don’t just earn stars; they change behavior.

2. Personalized and Context-Aware

Each page adapts to the employee’s action, role, and context. It greets them by name, explains exactly what went wrong, and contrasts risky vs. safe actions. Learning feels human, relevant, and memorable.

3. AI-Powered Detection

Our AI engine automatically identifies warning signs, cues, and red flags in phishing simulations, such as suspicious links, spoofed domains, or urgency triggers, and presents them in the employee’s own language and cultural context.

4. Seamless Workflow Integration

No portals. No delays. Training happens instantly in the employee’s own environment, whether they’re on Outlook, Gmail, mobile, or remote, turning disruption into support.

5. Feedback-Driven, Not One-Way

Employees can rate their experience and share feedback in real time. Keepnet listens, analyzes sentiment with AI. This input is fully anonymized and then consolidated by AI to identify trends, highlight confusing elements, and surface improvement opportunities. System administrators receive actionable reports, ensuring continuous optimization of training content and simulations.

6. Positive, Empowering Tone

Mistakes aren’t punished, they’re reframed as shared learning opportunities. This builds psychological safety, encouraging employees to report threats and act as defenders instead of hiding errors.

7. Multilanguage, Automatically Localized

Unlike simple translations, our platform delivers contextual localization. Employees in Germany, France, Brazil, or Japan experience content that feels natural and familiar. AI ensures terminology and examples reflect local culture.

8. Fully Customizable

Every organization has its own risk profile, policies, and communication style. With Keepnet, you can fully customize the Just-in-time Learning Page, adjust the wording, include internal policies, or even embed role-specific examples.

9. Automatically Branded with Your Company Identity

Your employees won’t feel like they’ve been redirected to a third-party tool. The page inherits your company logo, colors, and brand elements automatically. Training feels like it comes from inside the organization.

10. NIST-Aligned Terminology

We align with industry standards, using terms like warning signs, indicators, and cues instead of idioms that don’t translate globally. This ensures both clarity for employees and compliance alignment for leaders.

11. SBCP-Ready Metrics

Unlike competitors that track clicks and stars, Keepnet measures behavioral, cultural, and ambassador-level metrics, directly aligned with Gartner’s Security Behavior and Culture Program (SBCP). CISOs get proof of culture change, not vanity stats.

This philosophy drives every product decision we make. Training must be contextual, timely, and respectful if it is to drive real culture change.

Use Cases: Industry Scenarios

• Financial Services: Employees learn to recognize fraudulent payment or invoice requests. After one click, the Just-in-time Learning Page highlights urgency triggers and domain spoofing, helping reduce fraud risk.
• Healthcare: Staff encountering simulated patient-record phishing emails see tailored cues about data protection and compliance, strengthening HIPAA and GDPR readiness.
• Energy & Utilities: Operators exposed to “emergency response” phishing simulations learn how attackers exploit urgency and authority, safeguarding critical infrastructure.

Metrics & Benchmarks

Real-world results demonstrate the impact of Just-in-time Learning:

• Organizations using Keepnet’s JIT Learning Page saw up to 40% fewer phishing clicks within the first three months.
• Phishing email reporting increased by 55%, showing stronger employee confidence.
• Average dwell time of malicious emails in inboxes was reduced by over 60%.

(Source: Keepnet Data Insights, 2025)

How JIT Integrates with Other Keepnet Products

Keepnet’s Just-in-time Learning Page integrates seamlessly with:

• Phishing Report Button: Reported phishing emails generate adaptive JIT training, closing the loop between detection and learning.
• Incident Responder: Lessons learned feed into automated incident analysis and remediation, reducing SOC workload.
• Learning Paths: JIT exposures can automatically enroll employees into tailored learning journeys, ensuring reinforcement where it’s most needed.

Future Outlook: The Evolution of JIT Learning

Keepnet is pushing Just-in-time Training into the future with:

• AI personalization: Adaptive cues based on user behavior and risk profile.
• Predictive nudges: Proactive alerts for employees showing risky behavior patterns.
• Adaptive learning paths: Automatically adjusting training content based on individual performance and needs.

This roadmap ensures that JIT Learning remains not just reactive but predictive and continuously evolving.

Three Things You’ll See When You Try It

When you activate Keepnet’s Just-in-time Learning Page in your organization, here’s what you can expect to see:

1. Employees spot phishing attempts faster: After just one or two exposures, employees start recognizing the same warning signs in real emails.
2. Reporting rates increase: Instead of ignoring suspicious emails, employees feel confident enough to report them through the Keepnet Phishing Report Button.
3. Measurable risk reduction: You’ll see the impact in your dashboards: reduced click-through rates, shorter dwell times, and lower organizational phishing risk scores.

Why This Matters for CISOs and Risk Leaders

For CISOs, it’s not enough to say “we trained employees.” You need measurable outcomes: reduced incidents, faster detection, and stronger compliance posture.

Just-in-time Training provides:

• Outcome-driven metrics executives understand (e.g., cost savings from avoided breaches, operational efficiency gains).
• Regulatory alignment with frameworks like NIST and ISO that emphasize continuous improvement.
• Scalability across geographies, roles, and risk levels, without overburdening security teams.

Conclusion

Cybersecurity is a human challenge as much as a technical one. By embedding awareness training directly into the moment of risk, you not only protect your organization, you build a culture where every employee becomes an active defender.