Phishing Simulation | Guardz Help Center

Phishing Simulation Capabilities

Leveraging generative AI, Guardz enables you to generate custom Phishing simulations for each department based on unique guidelines.
The simulation will be sent to the selected users and then track the user's behavior - who successfully opened the email and didn't click and who failed and clicked on the link in the email.

As a best practice, we suggest generating the Phishing Simulation before publishing an Awareness Campaign. By doing that, you can check the employees' security awareness situation and reflect on the results to highlight the importance of the training.

How to Create an Awareness Phishing Simulation?

Create Simulation:
In the main Awareness module screen, click on "Phishing Simulation - Create."
Allow List:
Add the Guardz domain to the Allow List in your email provider to prevent marking this domain as Spam.
Simulation content:
On the content page, define the general guidelines for the Simulation: to whom the email will be sent (company name and recipient), from whom (sender name and title), the content type, industry, tone, length of the email, and language.

Then give your campaign a name (this is an internal name).

Click AI Generate and the email will generate within a few seconds, based on the values you entered.

By clicking the Regenerate button, you can regenerate the email until you find a version you like.

You can also edit the email content, subject line, and sender name by clicking the edit button. Note that it is mandatory to include at least one phishing link in the email content.

💎 Tip: You can set the Recipient to 'No Name' when the recipient name pulled from the main directory doesn't match the email language.
Assign Simulation & Schedule:
- Scheduling the Simulation
  Set the start date and end date of the Phishing Simulation. By the end of the simulation, an issue will be created based on the results achieved during this time.
  The best practice is a 5-day duration, but sometimes a day or two is enough.
  If you choose a start date later than today, the Simulation will be sent between 9 AM and 10 AM on the selected date (based on your machine time).
- User Selection
  When you want to go ahead with sending the simulation to your users, choose the users you would like to target:
  
  a. Users - select specific users you want to target in your campaign. You can invite additional users after the campaign goes live.
  * This can be used for internal testing of the campaign as well
  
  b. Groups - select the multiple groups you want to target. The groups are being reflected from your Google/Microsoft admin account.
  Once you choose the groups, you’ll be shown the potential users to which the campaign will be assigned.
Preview & Launch:
The simulation email will be sent from a dedicated domain where the email alias will be customized according to the content signature.
When all looks good, click 'Assign,' and the simulation will be sent.
Track results:
💡 Note: It takes up to 1 hour to view the results of the Phishing Simulation!

After you activate the Phishing simulation, the results can be tracked in the simulation results. You can see the primary metrics of Send rate, open rate, and click rate and which user clicked on the phishing link.

The Phishing simulation duration can be stopped anytime by clicking the 'stop campaign' button.
By the end of the campaign, the issues will open per simulation, displaying the users who failed and clicked on the link.
You can add additional users at any point to the simulation after it has been activated by clicking on 'Invite Users.'
User Interaction and Results:
User Status:
- Pending: email has been sent to the user or when the user opened the email but didn't click.
- Success: The simulation finished, and the user didn't click on the link
- Clicked: The user clicked on the link in the simulation email.
  Once a user clicks on the phishing email URL, they will get a message telling them it was a simulation.

8. Extracting Data:

It's easy to extract a list of the users and their status in completing the assignment. Simply click the button in the top-right corner and export to CSV or print. This allows admins to efficiently communicate with their customers about how their employees performed and if follow-up is required.

The CSV and printed file will include the sent, opened, and clicked timestamp for each user. This information is helpful when troubleshooting issues with the simulation. For example, if the opened and clicked timestamp matches the sent timestamp, it is likely that the email was blocked by the user's email security. In this situation, you may need to change your white labeling settings.