IRONSCALES vs. KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training

When deploying to a client who is very sensitive to email routing disruptions like those that can occur by putting an email filter in front of the email server, IRONSCALES deployment is extremely simple. It hooks into the user's mailbox, and not only filters point forward but a number of days back.

Incentivized

This is a very appropriate training system for a school district. We have the ability to add or remove the number of required training. Originally, we scheduled 4 modules per year, but we reduced it to 2 per year, because teachers shared they felt it was too much, originally.

Incentivized

• Real World Examples - Many of the training modules show Kevin Mitnick actually gaining access to a machine showing how one click can allow a malicious actor access to a machine or network.
• Up-to-Date content - They are always adding new training and phishing examples.
• The ability to schedule training and phishing tests.

Incentivized

• Uploading your own SCORM content can be problematic with what seem like arbitrary restrictions (e.g. file size, quiz word count, etc.)
• Content that once was available at our level was taken away so that they could repackage it as a new "product" for an additional cost. They should have grandfathered in existing clients.
• Reporting capabilities (key for compliance artifacts) should be better designed with flexibility for users to present content in a manner suited to their specific circumstances

Incentivized

Between the ease of use, cost effectiveness, functionality and continued improvements Knowbe4 continues to make it would be pretty hard to find another competitive product that wraps it all up like KnowBe4 has. Not saying it couldn't happen, but haven't seen anything that competes at this point.

Incentivized

KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training is simple to use, simple to administer, effective, with quality content. It is easy to take the training and we have the reminders set so that the longer a user puts the training off, the more frequently they will receive reminder emails. Eventually they get emailed every day until they take the training. But with a simple click, they can get into the training content.

Incentivized

There have only been a handful of outages in the 2 years we have had the product. Even during those instances, parts of the system were still operational

Incentivized

Pages load quickly, filter/sort quickly, and don't slow down or freeze. Everything is smooth and very easy to use. There are a places in the UI where you can forget how to get there, but other than that everything is great. We have had no issues using any part of the website.

Incentivized

Tech prod support is great! I did have to ask for a new customer success rep, needed a more experienced person to match my 12 years of experience running Cybersec training programs. Would suggest that more matching of rep level of knowledge to client level knowledge would help.

Incentivized

Helpful and knowledgeable account managers have helped us navigate and use the system to our full potential

Incentivized

confusing question. I inherited this application so I didnt get any formal training other than the person who was leaving. The CSM provided some later on when I asked in a zoom call

The implementation went really well and KnowBe4 was there the whole time on setup to make sure things were setup correctly. The only thing we had to figure out on our own was to script users automatically being added to security groups. So that when they sync to knowBe4 from AD they are placed into the same/correct groups.

Incentivized

Postini, Windows Defender (built into M365) & Trend Micro email security. Postini was purchased by Google and then went away. Trend Micro was very basic at the time I used it (many years ago) and utilized purely blacklisting tech but that was before the AI boom. Windows Defender is not as multi-tenant friendly.

Incentivized

KnowBe4 integrates seamlessly with Drata to monitor security compliance. It is possible to chose which training campaigns are mandatory to consider the security awareness training control passed. The integration is easy to configure and works with complex scenarios (optional and mandatory training campaings, different progress status per each employee, etc.).

Incentivized

It's kind of expensive compared to other products on the market although I think this product is likely better than those other products it 3 times better? I think not.

The product scales greatly. As long as you upgrade the license to support the number of users you are needing, adding in those new users is easy. Also getting those users set up with trainings/campaigns is very easy as well

Incentivized

The team was great to work with and took their time to ensure that we knew what we were doing with the product and that it was set up to meet the specific needs of our organization. This wasn't just a cookie-cutter deployment, but rather they focused specifically on our needs.

Incentivized

• Understanding its limitations with regards to cyber security education campaigns
• Rigid domain lists. Might be attributed to how we purchase through a distributor but if a client needs to add a monitored domain name, it must be requested instead of allowing me to do it myself.
• Unclear if there have ever been any outages or service disruptions. Since it is monitoring mailboxes and not routing email, there is no outage client side. This could be a benefit but it also means end users might be unprotected during an outage.

Incentivized

• The smart group feature has provided us insight to users who continually fail phishing simulations and allows automatic training assignment. This has greatly reduced our technician's time spent inside the service, allowing them to focus on more important projects.
• After switching to KnowBe4, for Cybersecurity training, our business has seen an increase of more than 20% participation in training.
• I can't say enough about the Cybersecurity Assessment feature, which informs us of end-user weaknesses and strengths. Knowing where the company is strong and weak allows us to adjust training and system configurations, keeping the business more secure.

Incentivized