Is It Worth Investing in Phishing Simulations? 5 Factors to Consider
It’s 2025, and phishing is still one of the most prevalent and costly cyber threats, with no signs of slowing down.
Organizations are struggling to keep up, as traditional cybersecurity controls alone can do very little when it comes to well-crafted attacks that exploit human error. The only solution to this problem is regular, realistic training that helps employees learn how to recognize and report phishing attempts.
By exposing employees to realistic threat scenarios in a controlled environment, phishing simulation training, in particular, offers a practical and effective way of raising security awareness levels among business teams.
If you’re thinking about whether your business can benefit from phishing simulation, consider these factors.
1. The Costs of Phishing Incidents vs. Prevention
Security budgets are tight and teams are overloaded, so financial cost is a key risk analysis factor that typically plays the biggest role in whether organizations invest in security measures like phishing simulations. When making the decision, it’s important to also consider the alternative: “How much will I risk if I don’t invest in phishing prevention?”
According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach sits at $4.88 million. Considering that 36% of breaches directly originate from phishing, it’s safe to say that phishing training would provide a significant return on investment (ROI).
Phishing simulation providers often charge under $100 per employee per year, so a large organization of 500 employees would only pay a maximum of $50,000 annually to address a significant risk factor for the organization.
All things considered, investing in phishing training is a sound financial decision that can save the company thousands, if not millions in potential breach-related costs.
2. The Increasing Sophistication and Frequency of Phishing Attacks
Another factor we have to look at is just how more advanced phishing attacks have gotten over the past few years. Artificial intelligence is helping attackers craft highly convincing and personalized campaigns that are very difficult to distinguish from legitimate communications. Gone are the days when a phishing email can be easily spotted due to typos, irrelevant details or poor grammar.
Criminals can also leverage AI to create virtual personas of real people, imitating their voices and facial expressions for highly convincing deepfake audio or video campaigns. This tactic is particularly popular with North Korean threat actor groups.
Not only are the campaigns more believable, but also way more frequent. In the second half of 2024, phishing attacks rose by 202%. One of the factors that’s been contributing most to the rise in attacks is Phishing as a Service (PaaS), toolkits that are available for sale on the dark web that allow even inexperienced attackers to launch sophisticated malicious campaigns.
3. The Limitations of Technical Controls
Many company leaders and decision-makers hold the wrong assumption that throwing money into as many technical security measures as possible equals stronger overall cybersecurity.
However, this only leads to the quick spending of already tight security budgets without much improvement to show for it. When considering these investments, we must look at the biggest risks for the organization. And for most, the human factor is right up there.
While technical controls like firewalls or email filters play a key role in reducing the threat surface, they don’t catch every phishing message, and human error still can and does pose a significant threat. Phishing simulations directly address the human aspect of the cybersecurity challenge and are a great addition to specialized cybersecurity services and tools.
4. Regulatory and Compliance Requirements
For organizations in tightly regulated industries, implementing phishing simulations could also help them meet their compliance requirements. Mainstream security regulatory frameworks like GDPR and HIPAA explicitly mention the requirement of security awareness training for the workforce.
For mandatory regulatory obligations, implementing phishing simulations can be a great way to achieve compliance, while enhancing your organization’s cyber resilience.
Non-mandatory frameworks, such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001 also strongly encourage security training for employees. If your organization aims to achieve compliance with these frameworks to demonstrate its commitment to security and get more contracts, phishing simulations can be an effective way to meet these expectations.
5. Overall Boost to Cyber Resilience
While it appears that phishing simulations only address one specific threat vector, their benefits extend far beyond. Being exposed to realistic and relevant threat scenarios will open the eyes of employees about just how dangerous the cyber landscape can be, and how important their actions are for maintaining the organization’s security.
The simulations will build strong security habits that will likely extend beyond phishing detection into other areas as employees become more careful about risky online behavior.
These effects will be most noticeable in organizations that have never before invested in cybersecurity training.
Conclusion
Phishing simulation is a powerful investment for every organization looking to address human factor risks in cybersecurity. There are many solutions that provide this type of training, ranging from managed platforms to customizable, tailored programs. As phishing threats become more common and sophisticated, training the workforce on how to recognize and report these attacks will become an essential part of a strong and comprehensive cybersecurity program.
