A Beginner’s Guide to Phishing Simulation Training for Employees | Huntress

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, everyone knows what phishing is and most likely has received or even fallen for a phishing email themselves. So at this point, there should be no excuse, right? Wrong.

While it’s apparent we all know what we’re up against, the facts still show that we continue to fall victim to these attacks. Therefore, the only way you’ll be able to build up your defenses and mitigate against phishing attacks is through practice. That’s where phishing training comes in handy for you and your employees.

Starting your phishing simulation training program as a part of your security awareness routine is the first step to better protecting your organization. To help you get moving, we’ll walk you through the steps of how to run a phishing simulation and create an action plan based on the results you find with Huntress.

The purpose of a phishing simulation training program is to let employees experience a real-world phishing attack in a safe place. It helps regularly gauge where your organization lands in its risk of experiencing an attack.

As a result, phishing simulation training should educate and create a lasting impact on your employee’s ability to make better decisions when confronted with phishing emails. These decisions can create outcomes like not clicking links, reporting suspicious emails, taking a moment to pause instead of being manipulated by a sense of urgency, and being more transparent about security threats.

A far too common misconception of phishing training is to treat it as a way to scrutinize employees. And even more drastically docking pay or letting someone go because of it. More often than not it’s going to be less about the individual and more about the process that’s been set up to help people learn.