Phishing simulation: Protect your business from cyber threats
Don’t let a phishing attack slip past your cyber defenses. Get peace of mind knowing your employees are prepared. Our simulated phishing campaigns allow you to empower employees in the environment where real phishing emails strike — their inboxes.
What is a phishing simulation?
A phishing simulation is a strategy used by organizations to evaluate and train employees on cybersecurity awareness. It allows you to imitate the most sophisticated real-world phishing attacks and prepare your employees for the phishing tactics hackers find most effective, including emails seeking sensitive information, like passwords, credit card numbers or other personal data.
The main goal of phishing simulations is to identify gaps in employee awareness, test the effectiveness of current training programs and improve overall organizational security.
How phishing simulations work
Phishing simulations mimic real-world phishing attack strategies that employees might face. Examples include emails containing shipping notifications, tax-related phishing scams, bank alerts and internal corporate communications.
If an employee fails to recognize a simulated phishing email and clicks a link, opens an attachment or enters information on a spoofed domain, Infosec IQ automatically delivers training material tailored to the event. The training is delivered immediately in a teachable moment to help the employee recognize the suspicious email and learn how to stop future phishing attacks from impacting your organization.
Frequently asked questions
What is meant by a simulated phishing test?
A simulated phishing test is an exercise where an organization sends fake phishing emails to employees to assess their awareness and responsiveness. These simulated emails mimic the techniques used in real-world phishing attacks that try to get recipients to click a malicious link, open an infected attachment or share sensitive data.
These tests are designed to be safe, controlled and educational. No damage occurs if an employee falls for the simulated phishing attack. Instead, their actions are tracked and recorded for the organization's security team to analyze.
Do phishing simulations work?
Yes! Phishing simulations are highly effective when implemented correctly as part of a broader cybersecurity awareness program. They work by helping your employees learn by doing, get immediate feedback and build ongoing awareness. They also allow you to measure your training programs and determine where improvement is needed.
How do you do a phishing test?
To start, make sure employees know how to report suspicious emails and what happens when they report both real phishing attacks and simulated phishing emails. Solutions like Infosec IQ provide immediate feedback each time an employee reports an email by specifying whether the email was a simulated phish or potentially malicious.
Infosec IQ allows you to create your own phishing templates, copy real phishing scams your team encounters or customize any of the 2,000+ existing phishing templates using our drag-and-drop editor. You can also customize or build your own in-the-moment training to help empower your employees with the skills they need to stay cyber secure.
How effective is a phishing test?
For phishing simulations to be effective, they should be part of a comprehensive security awareness program that includes a variety of training methods and materials. It's also important that the simulations are not used to shame or punish, which leads to a culture of fear and secrecy rather than one of openness and learning.
While phishing simulations can significantly improve an organization's resilience against phishing attacks, they are not a cure-all. Use them with other cybersecurity measures such as secure email gateways, multi-factor authentication, regular software updates and strong password policies. All of these topics — and more — are covered in our engaging training content, which can be personalized based on learner profiles or behaviors to drive higher engagement and positive behavior change.
What is a phishing email test for employees?
Even the best email gateways and security tools can’t catch 100% of the phishing emails targeting your organization. This makes teaching your employees how to prevent phishing attacks vital.
A phishing email test for employees goes beyond phishing awareness training. A simulated phishing campaign allows you to test employees directly from their inboxes and lets you deliver training the moment the employee clicks a suspicious link.
If an employee fails to recognize a simulated phishing email, clicks a link, opens an attachment or enters information on a spoofed domain, Infosec IQ automatically and immediately delivers training tailored to the event to capitalize on a teachable moment and teach employees to be active members of your cybersecurity defense team.
Can I run an Infosec IQ phishing test for free?
Yes! You can run a free Phishing Risk Test and send a simulated campaign to up to 100 employees. We’ll send you the results within 24 hours so you can learn your organization’s phishing rate and see where to target your training.
What are some of the most common phishing email examples?
Although new phishing scams appear nearly every week, we consistently see phishing attacks built around the following topics:
Shipment notifications
These emails typically spoof an online retailer like Amazon or Walmart or a delivery company such as UPS. The phishing email informs the victim of a package arrival, baiting them into clicking a link or providing personal information to investigate the unknown delivery.
Taxes
Tax-related phishing scams occur throughout the year but appear more frequently at the end of January when U.S. organizations provide employee W-2 forms and through April when taxes are due.
Banks and payments
Bank alerts and notifications from merchants and payment processors such as PayPal provide scammers an avenue to access victims’ financial information. These scams frequently reference a fraudulent charge to trick people into clicking a malicious link or providing personal information.
Internal and corporate communications
Business email compromise (BEC) attacks, spoofed messages from human resources and other corporate communication scams remain a common tactic for hackers to acquire credentials, employee records or even financial information.
Our phishing simulation services
With Infosec’s simulated phishing campaigns, you can create custom simulations from over 2,000 templates to teach employees to avoid every threat.
The benefits of phishing simulations
Phishing simulations benefit your organization by enhancing cybersecurity and promoting a safer digital working environment. These advantages include improved employee awareness, reduced risk of successful attacks and improved educational methods.
Choose from 2,000+ realistic phishing templates
Build simulated phishing campaigns from our library of over 2,000 templates to teach employees how to avoid the most dangerous phishing threats they face.
We add new templates weekly to simulate ongoing attacks, leverage recent news and keep employees ahead of new threats. Build your own phishing simulation campaign or select template categories to run automatically.
Simulate the most sophisticated phishing attacks
Prepare your employees for the most challenging threats they face by simulating the same domain spoofing techniques, typosquatting and attack types scammers find most effective.
Every template is paired with phishing microlearning tailored to the specific email. If an employee fails a phishing simulation, they immediately receive a short training lesson that highlights the red flags they missed and reminds them how to identify and report similar emails in the future.
Customize phishing templates or build your own
Every aspect of the Infosec IQ phishing simulator and training is customizable, allowing you to tailor employee phishing training to your organization’s greatest threat. Copy and paste real emails to send as simulated phishing, and use the drag-and-drop phishing template editor to update existing templates or build your own from scratch quickly.
With Infosec IQ, you can use custom phishing domains, create your own spoofed landing pages, build your own phished learner education pages and more!
Empower employees to report phishing emails
Turn your employees into active members of your cybersecurity defense with the PhishNotify email reporting plugin. Install the reporting button globally and encourage employees to report phishing emails with a single click.
PhishNotify automatically provides employees with immediate and positive feedback when they report a potentially malicious or simulated phishing email. It also streamlines the process of reporting suspicious emails to your security teams to enable them to respond to cybersecurity concerns faster.
Engaging training that positively impacts learner behaviors
Source: Infosec IQ customer usage and survey data
You're in good company
GB
George B.I think Infosec Institute provides a wide assortment of training material, as well as effective assessments to monitor the end user's training experience. Also, recently, Infosec Institute incorporated a "Catch of the Week" phishing simulations which are far better examples of real-world phishing attempts and more effective as training tools for our employees.
MG
Michael G.One of the things that sets Infosec IQ apart from other training platforms is its interactive and engaging content. The modules use a variety of formats, including videos, quizzes, and simulations, to keep users engaged and interested in the material. The content is also regularly updated to ensure that it remains relevant and up-to-date with the latest cybersecurity threats and trends.
DJ
Dustin J.Infosec IQ has become my favorite tool for phishing campaigns in our district. They have a huge variety of templates to choose from to suit your needs. The staff at Infosec is super helpful in setup and training. I recommend it to anyone looking for a Phishing training program.
