Abnormal Security vs. KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus

Another local organization was compromised, and we were one of the targets of their further attempts. We were 100% protected because the behavioral analysis protected us, but also allowed me to contact that organization and report their compromise. This has actually happened more than one time since going live.

Incentivized

PhishER comes with some good features, such as PhishML, PhishRIP, PhishFlip, etc. These features help us manage phishing email reporting incidents. From reporting emails via Phish Alert Button plug-in to collecting all reported emails in one place at the PhishER dashboard. Now, the PhishML comes into play, scanning all reported emails and tagging each as clean, spam, or threat. With the help of this machine learning-based algorithm, our investigation process becomes easier. Other features, such as PhishRip, help to search and quarantine phishing emails, and PhishFlip converts a real phishing campaign to a test phishing campaign.

Incentivized

• Spam filtering...we have been able to turn our spam sensitivity down on Exchange allowing more legitimate messages through to user inboxes.
• Malicious email filtering...we experienced several successful phishing attacks over the past year. Abnormal Security has prevented hundreds of individual campaigns since going live in August '22. I cannot thank them enough!
• Automated response for reported emails...my team is small and we do not have enough hours in a day to review and respond to each reported email. Abnormal Security performs additional analysis on those reports and automatically responds for us. If the message is spam or malicious, copies of those emails are looked for throughout the server and deleted.

Incentivized

• One platform that integrates reported emails and using PhishFlip to educated staff.
• Automation to remove malicious emails from mailboxes.
• Instantly report back to users if an email is safe or malicious.
• Easily review vital technical information to help you make a decision if an email is a threat.
• Allow comments to be left from staff and IT.

Incentivized

• None so far, I have been extremely happy with their service.

Incentivized

• Issues with Global Blocklist
• Email Template Modification - Simplification
• Target Specific Users vs. Groups
• PhishRIP info tabs (i.e. if improperly check ripped emails are turned into tests. This has caused issues.) Info tabs or markers allow user to hover and get more information about what action a check box or slider provides.

Incentivized

When we first discovered that KnowBe4 released something like this, we saw a demo of it and were floored at what it could do and how it could help us from a security standpoint. Gone are the days of us in IT sending out a mass email saying please don't click on anything in the email from sender "X", and it allows us to quietly and easily ensure that people don't take any action on malicious emails.

Incentivized

I give it an eight for the feature set. While I only give it an eight because the complexity and interconnectedness of the tools mean that there needs to be quite a bit of RTFM to get the most out of the products.

Incentivized

Responses to questions were answered quickly and accurately.

It was very simple to implement - with just a few settings needed to connect it to our O365 environment

Incentivized

Abnormal Security blocks malicious emails that both PhishER and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense miss. One thing that PhishER does have is the ability to flip a malicious message into a user education phishing email. That's cool, but I think we can just copy/paste the same info into a custom campaign.

Incentivized

Harmony does not provide security awareness training or simulated phishing emails like KnowB4. However, it does provide a phish alert button & workflow similar to PhishER & we may stop using PhishER because the Phish Alert reports from PhishER don't feed into Harmony to help train it from phishing emails that go through. We got Harmony after KnowB4 because we needed a tool to PREVENT phishing emails from getting to people's inboxes in the first place, which KnowB4 has very little capability for other than PhishER+ blacklists. It is a shame KnowB4 does not have the anti threat phishing prevention like Harmony considering all the email data it has & its existing AI analytic capabilities.

Incentivized

• Preventing compromises that have historically led to payroll or accounts payable threats.

Incentivized

• Phish/ER & PAD: Identifying email threats more quickly allowed us to send alert to the users' community in a timely manner based on the pattern of the threat.
• KnowBe4 Training Campaigns have proven to noticeably increase users' awareness.
• KnowBe4 Phishing Campaigns made users realize how dangerous and deceiving hacker can be.

Incentivized