Why can phishing simulations undermine employee trust? And how can an efficient alternative be found?
Phishing simulations have become a common strategy for assessing employees' ability to recognize digital threats, helping companies protect their assets and mitigate cyberattacks.
However, because individual vulnerabilities are often exposed, this approach can negatively impact organizational culture and reduce trust among staff, making learning more punitive than educational.
This is one of the reasons why alternative methods, such as gamification, are gaining popularity by offering more interactive, engaging and effective cybersecurity training. Would you like to find out how to use it to your advantage and learn about other innovative approaches? Read on!
Pentests: effective for systems, but do they work for people?
Penetration tests (also known simply as "pentests") are an indispensable practice in cybersecurity. In this process, experts simulate attacks on networks and applications to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by cybercriminals. When a breach is detected, adjustments are made to bolster the protection.
A phishing approach in cybersecurity training has more or less the same principle. Employees are tested, and those who fall for the scam are reprimanded or subjected to targeted and reactive training.
What many companies fail to realize is that this method is essentially punitive and can create an environment of distrust—one in which employees feel watched instead of motivated to learn.
While systems can be protected with patches and fixes, people need an alternative approach to improve their behavior that involves ongoing learning and motivation to develop good practices.
When security is viewed as a trap, employees tend to avoid engaging with any company communications for fear of reprisals, rather than try to understand and apply the concepts of cybersecurity on a daily basis.
Practical example
Imagine that someone is learning to fly a plane. There are two ways to approach this training:
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The pentest approach: The person is placed directly in the cockpit of a working airplane, without any prior training, and is expected to learn how to pilot the plane by their own means. They may even try to control the plane, but the likelihood of making a mistake is very high, and if they do make a mistake, they will be severely reprimanded for it. This method has the potential to cause fear and anxiety without actually providing a real understanding of what happened and how to prevent making these errors in the future.
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The ongoing learning approach: Instead of skipping steps, the individual starts with flight simulators, learns about the plane's controls, understands the procedures, and gradually gains confidence and experience before flying a real plane. When making mistakes, they receive constructive feedback and are able to learn from each step. This method helps them to understand the required actions and decisions, facilitating a more solid and secure understanding.
See how the first situation seems unimaginable in certain contexts? The phishing industry is one of the few that still embraces training that runs contrary to the fundamental principles of effective education.
Negative impacts of phishing campaigns
Phishing simulations might lead to unexpected consequences within an organization. Some of the top issues include:
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Breach of trust: When employees realize they are being tested without advanced warning, the activity can be interpreted negatively. This creates an environment of mistrust towards the security department, hindering engagement with digital protection initiatives.
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Demotivation and anxiety: A punitive approach causes employees to associate cybersecurity with bad experiences that leads to fear and insecurity rather than learning and awareness.
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Distorted results: Just because someone doesn't click on a fraudulent email, it doesn't necessarily mean they're fluent on the topic. Out of fear of being punished, employees may simply ignore the company's communications, which makes the tests unrepresentative of employees' real understanding of digital security.
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Focus on the consequence, not the solution: In many cases, these campaigns expose mistakes without offering an effective educational process. Instead of teaching strategies to mitigate attacks, they only reinforce failures without offering genuine and ongoing learning opportunities.
Gamification and continuous learning
In order to promote cybersecurity awareness without compromising organizational culture, adopting methods that encourage employees to actively participate is extremely important. An effective approach is gamification, which turns learning into an interactive and engaging experience.
Instead of just exposing vulnerabilities without offering adequate support, a training platform based on games and challenges encourages natural engagement, allowing employees to develop skills in a practical and intuitive way.
An example of this strategy is PhishOS, an innovative solution based on the NIST Phish Scale. This platform offers a hands-on, gamified experience with phishing, making cybersecurity training more dynamic and effective.
With PhishOS, teams learn to identify real and simulated threats without going through situations that may cause discomfort. In this way, digital security ceases to be a punitive factor and becomes an educational and motivating process.
How can digital security be transformed into an educational process?
Adopting a more humanized approach to cybersecurity training requires changes in the way digital security is presented within organizations. Some effective strategies include:
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Continuous education: Provide periodic content on best security practices to reinforce knowledge over time, ensuring that learning is constant and accessible.
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Constructive feedback: Instead of punishments, employees should be provided with clear explanations of their actions and guidance on how to improve, making learning more effective and motivating.
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Engagement of leadership: Leaders and directors need to demonstrate a commitment to digital security, creating an environment where data protection is valued and integrated into the organizational culture.
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Use of interactive platforms: Solutions like PhishOS make it easy for employees to learn in a light hearted and engaging way without the need for punitive approaches or experiences that make people uncomfortable.
Digital security needs to be a shared responsibility within organizations, but it must be conducted in a transparent and motivating way for the concept to be truly effective.
While phishing simulations may initially seem like an effective strategy, their impact on organizational culture can be more detrimental than beneficial. On the other hand, by investing in gamified awareness platforms, companies turn learning into a natural, interactive and engaging process, encouraging employees to proactively adopt good security practices.
The goal of PhishOS is to provide a more interesting and efficient training for your staff. Visit phishossimulator.com and try it free for 15 days!
