Collaboration
A notification about a shared file or a collaboration environment.
AWSMTECH
Phishing simulation
Assess and strengthen your employees' vigilance against phishing attempts.
AWSMTECH
Would your employees recognise a real phishing attempt?
- An urgent invoice.
- A Microsoft 365 document to review.
- An unusual request from management.
- A message asking to verify a password.
Sometimes a few seconds are all it takes to decide: is this message legitimate or malicious?
Phishing tests expose your employees to controlled simulations in order to assess their reflexes and gradually strengthen their ability to identify fraud attempts.
Because awareness training is more effective when it becomes concrete.
Human factor
Phishing doesn't test your firewall. It tests your people.
Cybercriminals do not always try to get around your security technologies. They may try to convince someone to open the door for them. Phishing attacks exploit credible situations to get their target to click a link, share information or take an unusual action.
The difficulty is that these messages can look like the digital communications your employees deal with every day. That is why security cannot rely on technology alone.
Your employees are also a line of defence.
Definition
What is a phishing test?
A phishing test involves sending an organisation's employees a controlled simulation of a phishing message, with no malicious intent. The goal is not to trick users. It is to observe how they react to a realistic scenario and turn the experience into a learning opportunity. In particular, it helps you better understand:
- Whether employees spot suspicious signals
- Whether they interact with the message
- Whether they know how to respond
- Whether certain topics need more awareness training
- How behaviours evolve from one campaign to the next
Learning
Testing to raise awareness more effectively
Theory alone is not always enough.
Training can explain that you shouldn't click on a suspicious link. But in reality, the message may arrive between two meetings, look like a Microsoft 365 notification or artificially create a sense of urgency.
A phishing test places awareness training in a situation close to everyday working life. Employees have to recognise the signals, make a decision and apply the right reflexes.
The question is not “Who got caught?” but rather:
“Which behaviours can we improve together?”
Method
How does a phishing campaign work?
- 01
Prepare
Define the campaign scope, the users involved and a scenario suited to the organisation.
- 02
Simulate
Run a controlled campaign reproducing certain typical mechanisms of a phishing attempt.
- 03
Measure
Observe the interactions planned within the campaign to obtain indicators for assessing behaviours.
- 04
Raise awareness
Use the results to reinforce good reflexes and improve understanding of the risks.
- 05
Repeat
Repeating the exercise periodically makes it possible to measure progress and gradually build a culture of vigilance.
- Simulate
- Measure
- Raise awareness
- Improve
Scenarios
Scenarios close to everyday work
To be useful, a simulation must be realistic enough to reproduce situations employees may actually face. Depending on the agreed scope, campaigns can be built around plausible business situations. For example:
User account
A request concerning access to a service or an account.
Business communication
A message that appears to relate to a routine company interaction.
Apparent urgency
A message designed to push the recipient to act quickly rather than verify.
The principle, however, is not to create the most deceptive scenario possible. The scenario must serve learning.
Indicators
Measuring what really matters
A phishing test should not just produce a figure such as “X% of employees clicked.” An isolated result offers little context.
We place campaigns within a continuous improvement approach:
- Are behaviours changing from one campaign to the next?
- Are users getting better at spotting suspicious signals?
- Are the same mistakes being repeated?
- Do employees know what to do when in doubt?
The goal is therefore not to rank employees. The goal is to measure and strengthen the organisation's overall resilience.
Approach
Training without blaming
Cybersecurity should build reflexes, not fear.
An employee who interacts with a simulation should not be considered “the weakest link”. Quite the opposite. A mistake is a particularly concrete opportunity to explain the signals that could have revealed the message.
AWSMTECH therefore favours an educational approach.
- Understand
- Learn
- Try again
- Improve
Security thus becomes a shared skill rather than a constraint imposed by IT.
Continuous awareness
From testing to continuous awareness
A one-off test provides information. A repeated approach gradually builds habits. That is why phishing testing is part of a continuous awareness programme rather than a standalone service.
Test
Observe reactions in a controlled scenario.
Explain
Help employees identify what should have caught their attention.
Train
Strengthen knowledge of the risks actually encountered.
Measure
Track progress over time.
Adapt
Evolve campaigns and awareness topics according to the needs identified.
Defence in depth
People and technology must work together
No awareness programme can eliminate risk entirely. Even an experienced employee may one day face a particularly convincing message.
That is why phishing tests must be part of a defence-in-depth strategy:
- Phishing testTest reflexes
- Awareness trainingStrengthen behaviours
- Identity protection & MFALimit the potential impact of compromised credentials
- Dark Web MonitoringDetect certain credential exposures
- Rempart SOC 24/7Monitor and detect suspicious security activity
BeeSecure
A natural part of BeeSecure
Phishing simulations thus become one of the layers addressing human risk, alongside technological protections — BeeSecure's defence-in-depth approach.
More than a simple test, it is a gradual improvement in human resilience against cyber threats.
Cybersecurity is not only about protecting machines. It is also about preparing people.
Compliance
Phishing tests and compliance
Phishing tests and awareness training can contribute to your organisational cybersecurity framework and help demonstrate a structured awareness programme. On their own, they do not guarantee compliance with any regulatory framework.
Employee awareness can also contribute to a broader approach to governance and cyber risk management.
Security culture
Testing an organisation, not judging individuals
Campaign results should be used to identify trends and awareness needs, not to create an individual ranking of employees.
A successful campaign is one that helps the organisation understand its areas of attention and improve.
We test your collective resilience to strengthen your security culture.
Why AWSMTECH
Why AWSMTECH?
Controlled simulations
Test behaviours without exposing the business to a real threat.
An educational approach
Turn mistakes into awareness opportunities.
Continuous improvement
Measure progress rather than relying on the result of a single campaign.
A global view
Combine awareness, identity protection, endpoint security and detection capabilities.
Integrated into BeeSecure
Phishing becomes part of a broader cybersecurity strategy.
A Swiss partner
AWSMTECH helps Swiss companies and organisations develop a cyber culture suited to their environment.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
It is a controlled simulation designed to assess how employees react to a message showing the characteristics of a phishing attempt.
No. The campaign is designed as an awareness simulation, with no malicious intent, within a framework agreed with you beforehand.
It depends on the platform and the chosen configuration. We favour organisational and educational indicators rather than individual rankings.
The idea is to use the situation as a learning opportunity: understand the signals that could have been spotted and reinforce good reflexes.
There is no universal frequency. The pace should be adapted to the context, the organisation's maturity and the objectives of the awareness programme.
No. They mainly test the human dimension. They must complement technical measures such as identity protection, MFA, endpoint protection and security event monitoring.
Phishing simulation
Would your employees recognise the next attempt?
Phishing is becoming increasingly hard to distinguish from legitimate communications. The best answer is not to ask your teams never to make a mistake. It is to give them the knowledge and reflexes to make mistakes less and less often and know how to react when in doubt. With AWSMTECH, turn phishing simulations into a concrete tool for improving your cyber culture.
Schedule a callA question about phishing simulations? Write to us