What To Expect From A Simulation Phishing Tool: Features & Benefits

With approximately 1% of all global emails believed to be phishing attempts, it is essential for businesses to proactively protect and coach their employees from these threats. Implementing simulated phishing campaigns can be a useful method to assess employee reactions to potential attacks, pinpointing vulnerabilities, and delivering targeted coaching to reinforce employee awareness and resilience against increasingly sophisticated phishing threats.

How do phishing simulations work?

You experience a simulated phishing attack that mimics real-world phishing attempts, allowing your team to handle threats in a safe, controlled setting. By sending out a fake phishing email to employees, businesses can see firsthand how staff respond and identify any weak spots. 

These simulations are highly customisable. You can tailor the emails to include malicious links or attachments or use social engineering tactics to make them appear as though they're from a trusted source, like a bank or a company executive. The goal is to make the simulation feel as realistic as possible, so employees learn to spot and handle genuine threats effectively. 

Once the email has been sent out, businesses can track how employees respond. This tracking includes who clicked on links or opened attachments, who might have provided sensitive information, and who flagged the email as suspicious. 

Such insights are invaluable for pinpointing areas where employees might benefit from additional guidance or coaching. By empowering employees to identify and report simulated phishing emails, you are better preparing them for real-world cyber threats, while holding them accountable for their own security behaviours.

These attacks can be conducted regularly to help reinforce cyber security awareness within the organisation, and prevent the recurrence of risks. By conducting continuous simulation campaigns, businesses can ensure that their employees are better equipped to identify and respond appropriately to these types of attacks.

The purpose of phishing simulations

Phishing simulations can also help test the effectiveness of security measures like spam filters and firewalls. By scrutinising these controls within a simulated scenario, businesses can detect any weaknesses and address them before a genuine attack transpires.

Another crucial aim of phishing simulations is to promote cyber security awareness across the organisation. By involving all employees in these exercises, businesses can cultivate a culture of cyber security vigilance and inspire employees to take an active part in safeguarding the organisation from cyber threats.

In essence, phishing simulations strive to help businesses mitigate the risks of successful phishing attacks and bolster their overall cyber security stance. By empowering people to identify and counteract these threats, businesses can significantly diminish the impact of phishing threats on their organisation.

What to expect from a phishing simulation tool?

Automated phishing simulation solutions offer an efficient service for businesses seeking to enhance their employees' cyber security awareness and preparedness. By enabling companies to run regular simulated phishing attacks and monitor staff responses, these tools help to identify areas requiring improvement.

So what do businesses gain by using simulated phishing tools? Here’s some features to expect:

Intelligent Phishing Frequencies

Automated phishing simulations enable businesses to implement adaptive phishing frequencies. This feature sends phishing emails at varying intervals based on factors such as employee risk scores and past responses to phishing attempts. By maintaining a dynamic schedule for these simulated attacks, employees remain vigilant and consistently aware of potential phishing threats.

To ensure the highest level of adaptability, businesses can adjust the frequency of these simulated attacks based on the learning curve observed in employees. This results in a more personalised and engaging experience, ultimately improving the overall effectiveness of cyber security training.

Continuously Updated Templates

Automated phishing simulation services provide a selection of customisable, pre-built templates that are continuously updated to reflect current phishing tactics. By staying up-to-date with the latest trends and techniques used by cyber criminals, these templates ensure employees are tested on the most relevant and emerging threats.

This feature allows businesses to expose their employees to a wide range of phishing scenarios, including spear-phishing, whaling, and business email compromise (BEC) attacks. By simulating real-world attacks, employees gain a better understanding of the various tactics employed by cybercriminals, enabling them to identify and respond to genuine phishing attempts more effectively.

Employee Risk Scoring

Using data-driven risk scoring, automated phishing simulation software identifies employees who may be more susceptible to phishing attacks. This approach considers factors like previous responses to phishing attempts, job roles, and access to sensitive information. By concentrating on higher-risk employees, businesses can offer targeted training and education, ultimately improving their cyber security awareness.

Data-driven employee risk scoring can help businesses understand the overall risk profile of their organisation, allowing them to allocate resources effectively and prioritise training initiatives. This targeted approach ensures that employees or an entire team receive the appropriate level of training, resulting in a more efficient use of resources and a better return on investment in cyber security training programs.

Benefits of simulated phishing automation

Automated phishing simulations provide numerous benefits for businesses aiming to enhance their employees' cyber security awareness. Automation streamlines the process, saving time and resources while still delivering improved outcomes.

Fostering a more security-conscious culture

Automated phishing simulations assist businesses in cultivating a strong cyber security culture throughout their organisation. Regularly testing employees emphasises the importance of cyber security and motivates them to remain vigilant when identifying and responding to phishing attacks. By engaging all levels of the organisation in cyber security initiatives, businesses can foster a sense of shared responsibility and accountability for maintaining a secure digital environment.

In addition to raising awareness, a robust cyber security culture can help create an environment in which employees feel comfortable to report potential phishing attempts and sharing their experiences. This open communication can contribute to the early detection of threats and enhance the overall resilience of the organisation against cyberattacks.

Free Up IT Resources

Conducting manual phishing simulations can be time-consuming and demand significant resources from IT departments. By automating the process, businesses can free up resources to concentrate on other critical tasks, such as implementing security measures, monitoring network activity, and responding to incidents. Automation also reduces the potential for human error in the execution of simulated phishing campaigns, ensuring a consistent and accurate assessment of employee responses.

Prevent Over- or Under-Training

Utilising data-driven risk scoring, companies can deliver targeted training to employees who need it most, preventing over- or under-training of employees already aware of the risks. This targeted approach maximises the effectiveness of training initiatives, resulting in more efficient use of resources and a higher return on investment in cyber security education.

Create customised simulations

Businesses can dictate the type and frequency of phishing emails their employees receive. This ensures that employees are tested on the most relevant threats, allowing businesses to keep pace with emerging phishing tactics. Customisation options include tailoring the content, sender, and format of the malicious emails to better simulate real-world attacks. By exposing employees to a diverse range of phishing scenarios, businesses can better prepare them to recognise and respond to genuine phishing attempts, ultimately strengthening the organisation's overall cyber security posture.

Experience Intelligent Phishing with CultureAI

With 91% of cyber attacks starting from a phishing email, the challenge is significant, impacting businesses of all sizes. While generative AI and other technological advances have made phishing attacks more sophisticated, they don't necessarily need to be complex to succeed. The rise of BEC-like attacks demonstrates this. 

It's crucial to implement strong technological defences, but it is equally important to pinpoint vulnerabilities with realistic attack scenarios and coach employees with just-in-time education. CultureAI’s Intelligent Phishing does just that. 

Utilising hundreds of real-world phishing scenarios dynamically delivered to an employee based on their location, job role, and risk profile, to assess social engineering vulnerabilities and identify high-risk and at-risk employees. All automated, enabling businesses to save time and concentrate on other vital tasks while still fostering a security-conscious culture.

We utilise data-driven employee risk scoring to pinpoint employees or teams who may be more susceptible to phishing attacks, considering factors such as past responses to phishing attempts, job roles, and access to sensitive information. By focusing on higher-risk staff members, businesses can provide targeted security awareness training and education to improve their cyber security awareness.

Our platform also prevents businesses from over- or under-training their employees. By leveraging data-driven risk scoring, companies can offer targeted training to those who need it most while not overloading employees already conscious of the risks.

CultureAI presents businesses with an effective way to assess and bolster their employees' cyber security awareness. Automation saves time and resources while delivering improved results. With adaptive phishing frequencies, up-to-date templates, data-driven employee risk scoring, and customisable phishing emails, our solution enables businesses to stay ahead of emerging phishing threats and cultivate a positive security culture.