A phishing simulation is a cybersecurity exercise that tests an organization’s ability to recognize and respond to a phishing attack.
A phishing attack is a fraudulent email, text or voice message designed to trick people into downloading malware (such as ransomware), revealing sensitive information (such as usernames, passwords or credit card details) or sending money to the wrong people.
During a phishing simulation, employees receive simulated phishing emails (or texts or phone calls) that mimic real-world phishing attempts. The messages employ the same social engineering tactics (e.g., impersonating someone the recipient knows or trusts, creating a sense of urgency) to gain the trust of the recipient and manipulate them into taking ill-advised action. The only difference is that recipients who take the bait (e.g., clicking a malicious link, downloading a malicious attachment, entering information into a fraudulent landing page or processing a fake invoice) simply fail the test, without adverse impact to the organization.
In some cases, employees who click on the mock malicious link are brought to a landing page indicating that they fell prey to a simulated phishing attack, with information on how to better spot phishing scams and other cyberattacks in the future. After the simulation, organizations also receive metrics on employee click rates and often follow up with additional phishing awareness training.
Recent statistics show phishing threats continue to rise. Since 2019, the number of phishing attacks has grown by 150% percent per year—with the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) reporting an all-time high for phishing in 2022, logging more than 4.7 million phishing sites. According to Proofpoint, 84% of organizations in 2022 experienced at least one successful phishing attack.
Because even the best email gateways and security tools can’t protect organizations from every phishing campaign, organizations increasingly turn to phishing simulations. Well-crafted phishing simulations help mitigate the impact of phishing attacks in two important ways. Simulations provide information security teams need to educate employees to better recognize and avoid real-life phishing attacks. They also help security teams pinpoint vulnerabilites, improve overall incident response and reduce the risk of data breaches and financial losses from successful phishing attempts.
Phishing tests are usually part of broader security awareness training led by IT departments or security teams.
The process generally involves five steps:
Once they complete these steps, many organizations compile a comprehensive report summarizing the outcomes of the phishing simulation to share with relevant stakeholders. Some also use the insights to improve upon their security awareness training before repeating the process regularly to enhance cybersecurity awareness and stay ahead of evolving cyber threats.
When running a phishing simulation campaign, organizations should take the following into account.
Phishing simulations and security awareness trainings are important preventative measures, but security teams also need state-of-the-art threat detection and response capabilities to mitigate the impact of successful phishing campaigns.
IBM Security® QRadar® SIEM applies machine learning and user behavior analytics (UBA) to network traffic alongside traditional logs for smarter threat detection and faster remediation. In a recent Forrester study, QRadar SIEM helped security analysts save more than 14,000 hours over 3 years by identifying false positives, reduce time spent investigating incidents by 90%, and reduce their risk of experiencing a serious security breach by 60%.* With QRadar SIEM, resource-strained security teams have the visibility and analytics they need to detect threats rapidly and take immediate, informed action to minimize the effects of an attack.
Learn more about IBM QRadar SIEM
*The Total Economic Impact of IBM Security QRadar SIEM is a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM, April, 2023. Based on projected results of a composite organization modeled from four interviewed IBM customers. Actual results will vary based on client configurations and conditions and, therefore, generally expected results cannot be provided.
The post What is a phishing simulation? appeared first on IBM Blog.
With the advent of generative AI and machine learning, new opportunities for enhancement became available…
Even the makers of the Guardian Cap admit it looks silly. But for a sport…
In the current AI zeitgeist, sequence models have skyrocketed in popularity for their ability to…
What is Perplexity AI? Is it an over-hyped replacement for Google as a search engine,…
This paper presents Wally, a private search system that supports efficient semantic and keyword search…
This post was co-written with Lucas Desard, Tom Lauwers, and Sam Landuydt from DPG Media.…