Security Awareness Service
Employees are often the first line of defense against cyber threats. This fact sheet from Proofpoint highlights how AI-powered spear phishing simulations and needs-based e-training help employees recognize and avoid real attacks. Download the fact sheet to see how stronger security awareness can help protect your organization.
What is the Security Awareness Service and how does it work?
The Security Awareness Service is an automated training solution that helps your employees recognize and handle cyber security threats in a realistic way.
It combines two core elements:
1) **Realistic spear phishing simulations** – An AI-powered, patented Spear Phishing Engine sends employees simulated phishing emails with different difficulty levels. These can include:
- Mass phishing (Level 1)
- Spear phishing from C-level executives (Level 2)
- Emails using targeted company information (Level 3)
- Messages referencing colleagues and managers (Level 4)
- Spoofed domains (Level 5)
- Emails with response histories (Level 6)
- Advanced scenarios such as hidden mailbox reading (Level 7, planned)
Scenarios can also lead to bogus login pages, contain file attachments with macros, or include realistic email threads. This helps employees learn to spot even sophisticated attacks in a safe environment.
2) **AI-powered e-training** – When employees interact with these simulations, the system automatically assigns relevant e-learning content. Training is delivered through short e-tutorials, video clips, refresher modules, and quizzes, all accessible via a central User Panel. Content is available in multiple languages and uses gamification elements to keep engagement high.
Because the service is fully automatic and easy to use, you can strengthen your “human firewall” and build a sustainable security culture without adding heavy administrative overhead for your IT or security teams.
How does the Employee Security Index (ESI) improve our security culture?
The **Employee Security Index (ESI)** is a continuous awareness benchmark that measures how securely your employees behave when faced with simulated phishing and other security-related situations.
Here’s how it supports your security culture:
- **Continuous measurement**: ESI tracks how employees respond to spear phishing simulations and training over time, giving you a clear, ongoing picture of your organization’s security behavior.
- **Benchmarking**: Because ESI is designed as an industry-unique benchmark, you can compare security behavior across teams, locations, or the entire company, and see where additional support is needed.
- **Targeted training decisions**: The ESI score directly informs the Awareness Engine, which then manages who needs more training and who can receive less. Employees with lower ESI scores are automatically given more intensive e-training, while those with strong scores are not overloaded.
- **History and forecast**: Through the Awareness Dashboard, you can see how your company’s ESI has developed in the past and how it is expected to change in the future. This helps you track the impact of your awareness initiatives and plan next steps.
In practice, ESI turns security awareness from a one-off campaign into a measurable, ongoing program that you can manage and improve over time.
How is training personalized and managed for different employees?
Training is personalized and managed by the **Awareness Engine**, which is the technological core of the Security Awareness Service.
Key ways it personalizes and manages training:
- **Needs-based e-training**: The Awareness Engine uses data such as ESI scores and user behavior to decide who needs what kind of training. Every user receives as much training as needed, and no more than required.
- **Auto Training Mode**:
- Learning content is automatically rolled out to users and groups based on their needs.
- A **Productivity Booster** option ensures that users with additional learning needs receive more intensive training, while users with a strong security level are trained less frequently.
- New employees can be automatically onboarded into the training program (with LDAP/AD sync).
- **Manual Training Mode**:
- Administrators can manually assign specific training modules to selected groups or individuals when needed (for example, after a policy change or a new type of threat emerges).
- **Central User Panel**:
- Employees access all learning content in one place, including e-tutorials, video clips, refresher modules, and quizzes.
- Gamification elements encourage users to complete modules and improve their performance.
- **Awareness Dashboard**:
- Provides an overview of key metrics for training groups and employees.
- Shows training progress and ESI development so you can quickly see where your human firewall is strong and where you may want to adjust your program.
Together, these features help you reimagine security awareness as a tailored, data-driven program that fits different learning needs across your organization with minimal manual effort.