How to Phish Your Employees

You should run a phishing test on your employees because cybercriminals are increasingly bypassing firewalls, endpoint protection, and other technical defenses by targeting users directly through social engineering. In practice, your employees act as your organization's very last line of defense.

Phishing simulations allow you to establish a critical baseline of vulnerability, known as your Phish-prone™ Percentage. Testing employees regularly keeps them on their toes year-round, inoculates them against common threat tactics, and transforms them into an active security layer. Without consistent practice and testing, your employees will quickly forget their training and become highly susceptible to real-world attacks.

The most effective way to test your employees for phishing is by utilizing a fully automated, continuous security awareness training platform rather than trying to build a fake site manually.

First, conduct a preliminary baseline simulated phishing attack to determine what percentage of your users are currently vulnerable. Next, provide them with 30 to 40 minutes of online training covering various vectors of social engineering. Finally, commit to sending simulated phishing attacks continuously. For example, comprehensive platforms like KnowBe4 allow you to manage this three-step process easily through an automated console, turning what could be days of tedious manual work into a simple 15-minute, set-it-and-forget-it setup.

You should send simulated phishing tests to your employees at least once a month. The KnowBe4 article emphasizes that testing any less frequently is ineffective because security principles that go too long without practice will soon be forgotten.

Consistent, frequent testing keeps your users actively aware and on their toes year-round. Once employees realize they will be tested on a regular basis, their overall behavior changes. Routine simulations encourage them to naturally take a second or two to "stop, look, and think" before interacting with links or attachments in suspicious emails.

While you can absolutely create your own employee phishing test manually, it is highly discouraged due to the massive time commitment and complexity required.

To successfully "roll your own" simulation, you would have to raise a temporary web server, properly code a fake phishing site, draft a convincing social engineering email, configure the tracking and reporting metrics, and manage spoofing safely on your mail server. In practice, this takes days of dedicated work. Furthermore, you will have to manually fend off calls and emails from confused managers and users. For most IT administrators navigating a 60-hour work week, a manual phishing test is not a realistic option.

The best way to train employees on phishing is through a continuous, three-step process that deeply integrates testing and education to drive behavioral change.

The ideal strategy begins with sending a baseline simulated phishing attack to easily see who is initially vulnerable. Following that, employees should complete 30 to 40 minutes of targeted online training to help them thoroughly recognize different social engineering vectors. Keep in mind that you cannot and should not attempt to train them on everything all at once; focus intensely on making the material feel relevant to their daily workflows. Finally, reinforce this training by sending out new simulated phishing emails at least once a month.

When running a robust phishing simulation program, you should purposely explicitly decide which behaviors you want to shape, rather than trying to train on everything all at once.

The best practice is to deliberately choose two or three specific security behaviors to focus on. For example, you might orient your program entirely around helping employees identify external sender warnings and pausing to verify urgent wire transfer requests. The article recommends working intensely on simply those few selected behaviors over a dedicated 12 to 18-month period. Having these explicit goals ensures that your employees aren't overwhelmed by generalized information.

An effective employee phishing program fundamentally requires broad organizational buy-in; as an IT leader, you cannot and should not attempt to execute it alone.

Most importantly, you need to get the executive team actively involved to ensure strong leadership support, organizational alignment, and appropriate resources. Furthermore, the KnowBe4 guide directly suggests treating your security awareness program much like a standard marketing campaign to keep employees engaged and continuously aware. Actively having your leadership team on board helps align the internal messaging and firmly reinforces the critical idea that security is a company-wide priority.

When an employee routinely fails a phishing test, that failure should automatically trigger additional learning opportunities within your ongoing continuous training curriculum.

The ultimate strategic goal is to actively help your employees make smarter security decisions down the road. Once users genuinely understand that they will be tested on a regular basis—at least once a month—and that there are structured repercussions for repeated failures, their behavior naturally begins to change. With structured frequent testing, employees learn to routinely pause and take a second or two to "stop, look, think" before clicking on any suspicious email links.

A Phish-prone™ Percentage is a foundational metric measuring exactly what percentage of your end-users are currently highly vulnerable to targeted social engineering attacks before receiving comprehensive training.

By effectively sending an initial "baseline" simulated phishing attack without warning, you can clearly measure how many of your employees take the bait. Establishing this specific baseline is typically the very first step in establishing an actionable security program. Actively understanding your Phish-prone Percentage uniquely allows you to map explicit training goals, and importantly, it provides you with a tangible benchmark to track over time.