Globally, an estimated 3.6 billion phishing emails are sent daily (Source: JumpCloud), making it a major risk to businesses of any scale.
This blog will explore how phishing simulation services can help organisations build resilience against this aggressive attack method, with a look at a phishing service methodology, key benefits, and post-simulation suggestions.
What is a phishing attack?
A phishing attack is a type of cyberattack that attempts to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information, such as passwords or financial details, by impersonating a trustworthy entity through email, SMS messages, or fake websites.
Like social engineering attacks, phishing relies less on complex technical exploits and more on manipulating human psychology and trust.
Cybercriminals harass employees with fraudulent emails, often pretending to be a senior team member at their organisation to pressure them into complying with the email’s instructions.
Why simulated phishing matters for modern organisations
Simulated phishing attacks mimic real-world attacks to test employees’ reactions and your organisation’s security culture.
Because of its incessancy, phishing remains one of the most dangerous attack methods for businesses. With AI now enabling hackers to automate the spread of mass phishing emails, it’s more important than ever that businesses step up their vigilance against phishing scams. A simulated phishing attack can be an excellent way to audit this.
A phishing service works by simulating real-world phishing attacks in a controlled environment to test how employees respond to deceptive emails or messages. These campaigns help identify individuals or departments that may be vulnerable to social engineering tactics. After each simulation, detailed reports highlight click rates, reporting behaviour, and areas for improvement- giving you highly valuable insights into how to improve awareness.
Over time, this cycle of testing, feedback, and training strengthens an organisation’s overall security posture. It builds a proactive, security-conscious culture across the workforce, which is then passed on through positive culture and best practice.
What phishing test services typically do (step-by-step)
A professional phishing service usually follows repeatable stages:
- Discovery & Scope: Testers agree with your business on which teams, domains, and campaign goals are in scope.
- Threat modelling: Testers then design realistic templates that reflect current attacker techniques, so that testers can attack your organisation just as cyber criminals would.
- Campaign launch: Your team is sent simulated phishing emails. From there, testers track click rates, credential entries, and reports- identifying which employees are most vulnerable.
- Reporting & analytics: The testing team then provide your organisation with a report detailing open rates of the phishing emails, time-to-click metrics, and any particularly susceptible employees who may need additional training and support.
- Remediation & training: Using the report, your organisation’s IT team can now deliver appropriate training to employees, enforcing best practices to minimise the risk of future clicks in a real-world scenario.
- Repeat testing: It’s critical to evaluate your organisation’s resilience to phishing attacks regularly to identify whether employees have effectively taken on board the training and advice.
These steps ensure phishing test services remain ethical, measurable, and actionable, supporting you to identify security weaknesses and establish a clear picture of your organisation’s resilience to phishing attacks.
Benefits: measurable outcomes & risk reduction
Phishing simulation campaigns can be highly effective and a critical differentiator in preventing your business from being exploited by hackers.
As post-test training closes the knowledge gap for your employees, the click rate of illegitimate and risky emails will, in turn, reduce, minimising the risk window for potential exploitation via misclicks.
A phishing simulation service can also be hugely beneficial in fortifying customer trust by signalling a proactive attitude towards cybersecurity and data management.
It’s important to understand that a single phishing simulation offers limited benefits. Since phishing attacks rely on social engineering rather than technical exploits, the most effective countermeasures involve employee training and raising overall awareness. Therefore, your organisation should commit to ongoing retesting to accurately assess whether the training has been well understood and the real-world threats have been effectively minimised.
With OnSecurity’s simulated phishing services, businesses have the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of their post-test remediation and training efforts with our free retesting window, ensuring that the actions taken after testing are targeted and successful without additional expenses.
How can I make improvements post-phishing simulation?
Here are some top tips for making improvements post-phishing simulation.
Analyse flagged vulnerabilities
Evaluate identified risks, affected users, sensitive data, and potential security weaknesses to understand your organisation’s exposure. This analysis helps prioritise areas needing attention and informs targeted strategies to strengthen your overall security posture and reduce the likelihood of successful phishing attacks in the future.
Security awareness training
Employee training is essential in minimising the risk of successful future attacks. Your IT team should be proactive in organising up-to-date and applicable awareness training for your team, taking into consideration specific points of weakness identified by the campaign results.
This awareness training should emphasise the importance of securely handling personal information online, including credit card details, and provide guidance on preventing business email compromise through detailed examples of suspicious emails and phishing attempts.
A lot of businesses will invest in online training courses to deliver this information in an engaging and regulated way. This means that remote employees can also complete the training from home, providing more complete coverage of your team regardless of where they may work from.
Reinforce Positive Behaviours and Run Follow-Up Campaigns
A strong security culture is only as strong as the team enforcing it. Continually reinforcing positive behaviours- for example, incentivising employees accurately reporting phishing attempts using the Gmail ‘phish’ button can be a great way to ensure best practice is sustained. This will keep your organisation safe and reduce risk between audits.
By nurturing company-wide awareness, offering relevant and regularly updated training, and being transparent with users about safe data transfer and the risks of data breaches, you can effectively bolster your defence against evolving threats and phishing attacks, protecting valuable customer data from exploitation.
Empower your existing cybersecurity strategy and gain impactful insights into your organisation’s resilience to phishing attacks with OnSecurity’s phishing simulation service. Get an instant quote today.
