KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training

Score9 out of 10

1,168 Reviews and Ratings

What is KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training?

KnowBe4 is a security awareness and compliance training and simulated social engineering product. It is used by organizations worldwide to strengthen their security culture and reduce risk.

Categories & Use Cases

Security Awareness Training

Media

Screenshot of The Phishing Dashboard. This displays how end users are doing at-a-glance and in comparison to peers across industries with Industry Benchmarking.

Screenshot of KnowBe4's partners, including The Security Awareness Company, Popcorn Training, exploqii, Twist & Shout, El Pescador, CLTRe, Saya University, and MediaPRO. Together, they create security awareness training content available in the ModStore.

Screenshot of A security training quiz question showing "Security Moments Series: Spot the Bad Link" asking what Lisa should do when receiving an unexpected email with an HTML attachment, with three answer options and Submit/Cancel buttons.

Screenshot of The AIDA Phishing Template Generator interface, which displays a customizable phishing simulation tool with template setup options on the left and a preview of a generated "Annual Bonus Announcement" email featuring a QR code attack vector on the right.

Screenshot of The AIDA Configure Training interface, which displays settings for personalized remedial phishing training, including user enrollment options, completion timeframes, knowledge refresher schedules, and notification preferences, with an "Activate Remedial Training" button to implement the configuration.

1 / 5

Screenshot of The Phishing Dashboard. This displays how end users are doing at-a-glance and in comparison to peers across industries with Industry Benchmarking.

Phishing Simulations
Administrators can run simulated phishing attacks to test the effectiveness of the training and assess vulnerabilities.
Category average: 8.9
Single sign-on capability
The software system supports a centralized authentication mechanism allowing the user to access multiple systems with a single, centrally managed password.
Category average: 8.8
Role-based user permissions
Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.
Category average: 8.7

Individualized Security Training Plans
Training can be tailored to individual employees based on previous training, role, or assessed vulnerability.
Category average: 8.1
Industry-Specific Security Training
Security training can be tailored based on industry-specific requirements, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, etc.
Category average: 7.9
Training Gamification
Training content is available in a gamified format.
Category average: 7.7

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training.

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

16.1%

117 installations of 726

#2 most frequent

Manufacturing

15.0%

109 installations of 726

“Completion of a given training session / course are the most important to determine the effectiveness of the training session.”
— Systems / Network Administrator, SS White Dental

#3 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

11.0%

80 installations of 726

Pros

Highly effective and authentic phishing simulation campaigns.
Extensive and diverse training content library with engaging formats.
Automated user provisioning and management via Active Directory sync.

Cons

Some training content modules are perceived as outdated or irrelevant for specific use cases.
Initial platform setup and group configuration can be complex for administrators.
Reporting capabilities are sometimes limited, lacking desired depth and ease of access.

BAJES AL RABADI

Network and Security Administrator in Information Technology at Toronto Grace Health Centre (501-1000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use KnowBe4 to train our 800 users to keep our organization safe. The main business problem is the amount of phishing emails that our users receive.

Pros

Phishing training courses
Phishing campaigns
Explanation of the phishing email when a user clicks on links
Additional training courses for users who click on the phishing link

Cons

KnowBe4 should focus more on AI phishing as these kind of attacks are challenging

Return on Investment

Users forwarded the phishing emails from the campaign which opened many tickets on the JIRA system

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Intune

Other Software Used

Microsoft Intune

Matt Bergevin View profile

IT Program manager in Information Technology at Morrison Industries (501-1000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use this training for remedial purposes when one of our employees fails a phishing test, also distributed by KnowBe4. While we focus on it being punitive, we are looking to expand our use of KnowBe4's training to also be more preventative. This will help to ensure that our users are thinking security first and act cautiously when opening emails.

Pros

interactive training including tests in scorm modules
easy to digest pint sized learnings
repetitive phrases for learning to start habit making and knowledge retention

Cons

more expansive training into other areas beyond phishing
more examples that are real world and business specific

Return on Investment

we have yet to get ransomwared (fingers crossed)
our user phishing tests scores have gotten better
our number of reported emails has increased

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Barracuda Email Protection

Eric Stewart

Director of Technology and Facilities in Information Technology at Purdue Polytechnic High School (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use KnowBe4 to educate, test, and retrain our staff to go from liability in network security to become a "human firewall". Quarterly testing is completed with phishing campaigns. Users that fall for the emails are assigned short educational videos to help increase their phishing awareness.

Pros

Generates phishing campaigns that rank from the obvious to highly sophisticated
Provides timely and relevant training to users
The dashboard provides a quantifiable risk assessment of our organization. Something that can be difficult to gather with no program in place.

Cons

The one thing I would say is that users that are assigned training will forget their passwords and that becomes a bit of a hassle after a campaign
The ironic thing is that training emails after a user clicks on a campaign email is often flagged as phishing.

Return on Investment

We have created a phishing awareness culture in our organization where staff take pride in making sure potential phish schemes are flagged for review.
There are numerous instances where active phishing attempts to gain access to data or to steal funds are flagged and stopped before any real damage to our institution occurs.

Usability

Other Software Used

Adobe Acrobat, Alma SIS, Lightspeed Filter

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We were asked by vendors for our users to take a security awareness course annually, we also saw the need to train them to help fight the increased level of phishing attacks we were seeing.
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training seemed to fit the bill well, and many of our users were familiar with the platform.

Pros

Simulated phishing email tests
Easy to configure and schedule training plans
Active directory integration
Easy to use training portal

Cons

Stale training classes
Many classes require the highest available plan
Clunky interface to view and select classes for a training package

Return on Investment

Training compliance
Preventing phishing attacks

Usability

Other Software Used

CodeTwo Email Signatures 365, CARET Legal, Bitdefender GravityZone

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training in our organization to provide company-wide security awareness training to all of our employees. We generally provide training on social engineering topics and compliance training. For Non-IT employees, we provide trainings where less technical terms are used and for IT people, we use highly technical trainings like Kevin Mitnick trainings. Before using the KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training, we were facing a lot of issues on spam and phishing emails. Our employees were not able to identify difference between a real and phishing email and we were facing account compromise issues as well but after implementing this training, we are seeing a lot of difference and seeing a positive growth at the organization level. Since employees are not getting into phishing and vishing attacks, we have seen confidence in users and also protecting them from account compromise. From Knowbe4, we have purchased Security Awareness Training, PhishER and Security Coach and we are using all of them to protect our data and to educate our employees.

Pros

KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training has well-designed videos on almost every topic of social engineering attacks, making it the best in the market. It has less technical videos for Non-IT people and high technical like KMSAT for IT people other than cyber security guys.
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training has a good phishing test campaign feature from which you can launch a phishing test for all or a selected group of people to test them on a real phishing test environment.
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training has a good number of security related games and quizzes that makes the training part funny and attractive.
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training provides monthly newsletters and posters that we can use to send to all employees to make them aware of the current security scenarios.

Cons

KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training has a good amount of videos but they still have fewer videos with different lengths on top priority topics like Phishing attacks, Smishing attacks, Vishing attacks, etc. They should add more videos with different lengths on these topics.
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training does not update its video inventory called 'ModStore' with the latest and trending topics of cyber security. They should review and add videos every week with the latest trends in the security.
Security Coach that comes with the Diamond Subscription of KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training is a good feature but it is very difficult to implement it. You have to provide all your organization's data to this application so that it can read all and can generate alerts on that basis.

Return on Investment

The KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training has had a very positive impact on our organization. After implementing this, our end users are educated and now they can make a difference between a clean email and a phishing email.
After implementing the training, we are seeing a very less number of clicks on a phishing link and hence we have improved our data breach rate.
With the KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training, we have minimized the account compromise rate because users are aware and they are not getting fooled by a phishing email.
With KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training, we have gained trust from outside customers on a security level.

Alternatives Considered

Mimecast Awareness Training

Other Software Used

Atera, Microsoft Defender for Identity, KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus

Cofense PhishMe

Proofpoint Security Awareness Training

Infosec IQ

Mimecast Security Behavior Management

Hoxhunt

KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training

What is KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training?

Categories & Use Cases

Media