How to Use Phish-prone Percentage

During a phishing campaign, your users will receive Phishing Security Tests (PST). Based on if they fail or pass the phishing security test, they will receive a Phish-prone Percentage. Users with a low Phish-prone Percentage are less likely to fall for real phishing attacks than those with a higher Phish-prone Percentage. If you’re interested in learning more about PST, see our What is a Phishing Security Test (PST) and How Does it Work? article.

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What Is a Failure?
How Phish-prone Percentage Is Calculated
Campaign Phish-prone Percentage

What Is a Failure?

If a user interacts with the email in an unsafe way, that action is a failure and the user fails that test. Users can have multiple failures from a PST during a phishing campaign. The different types of failures are:

• Clicking the embedded link
• Entering data on a landing page
• Opening an attachment
• Enabling a macro on an attachment
• Replying to the simulated phishing email 

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How Phish-prone Percentage Is Calculated

A Phish-prone Percentage is the percentage of employees that are prone to click on a phishing link. It differs from a Phish-failure Percentage since it tracks the exact way a user fails. It is possible for a user to have many failures on one email and receive a Phish-prone Percentage that goes over 100 percent. For example, if a user opens an email, clicks on the link, and opens the attachment, they have two failures and one failed phishing test. As a result, this user will have a 200 percent personal Phish-prone Percentage, because the user failed two times in one test.

A higher personal Phish-prone Percentage indicates that the individual user may be more vulnerable to an email-borne social engineering attack. If a user opens a simulated phishing email and has many failures, then they are failing to spot red flags. Knowing the number and types of failures can help determine what training the user needs.

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Campaign Phish-prone Percentage

A phishing campaign creates a Phish-prone Percentage from the number of total failures divided by the total number of emails delivered in that campaign.

If 100 people received emails, and 52 of them clicked a link in the email that would mean 52 percent of them failed. If eight of those 52 people also entered data into the landing page, that would increase the Phish-prone Percentage for that campaign to 60 percent.

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