Secure Human Behavior – Recognizing and Reporting Phishing Emails
Train your workforce to recognize and report phishing emails, fostering secure behavior. Discover the business and cybersecurity benefits and how Keepnet streamlines this process.
2025-01-10
Why Secure Behavior Matters
In cybersecurity, technology alone isn’t enough to prevent breaches—secure human behavior plays a significant role. One of the most important behaviors is recognizing and reporting phishing emails.
A recent 2022 Gartner Cybersecurity Awareness Survey revealed that:
- 84% of organizations aim to measurably change employee behavior through security awareness programs.
- 89% measure the impact of their security awareness investments to track employee behavior change.
This shows that businesses understand that teaching is not enough—the real goal is deploying secure behaviors across the workforce. In this post, we’ll explore:
- Why reporting phishing is essential for security
- The business and cyber benefits of this secure behavior
- How to deploy and track phishing reporting as part of your security awareness program
This is part of our Secure Human Behavior series—designed to build lasting security habits across organizations.
What Is Phishing Reporting and Why Is It Critical?
Phishing reporting is the act of flagging suspicious emails to the security team for further investigation. This simple action can thwart complex attacks and significantly reduce breach risks.
Despite phishing awareness, many employees ignore or delete potential phishing emails instead of reporting them. The key to change lies in habit formation and ease of action.
Why Is Reporting Phishing Important?
- Protects Sensitive Data – Early detection prevents credential theft or data breaches.
- Strengthens Defenses – Reported phishing emails help improve spam filters and threat intelligence.
- Prevents Lateral Spread – Reporting halts email-based attacks before they reach other users.
Keepnet makes phishing reporting seamless and automatic, reducing the burden on employees while improving overall threat visibility.
The Business and Cybersecurity Benefits of Reporting Phishing Emails
Teaching employees to report phishing isn’t just good practice—it directly impacts business continuity and cybersecurity resilience.
1. Business Benefits
- Reduced Downtime – Reporting phishing prevents ransomware or malware infections that could disrupt operations.
- Cost Savings – Early phishing detection reduces incident response costs and legal repercussions.
- Operational Efficiency – Automation through Keepnet’s Incident Responder speeds up response, saving valuable time.
2. Cybersecurity Benefits
- Faster Threat Mitigation – Reported emails undergo 20+ threat analysis engines with Keepnet, enabling faster incident resolution.
- Reduced Phishing Dwell Time – Keepnet ensures phishing emails are removed from inboxes 186x faster than manual methods.
- Continuous Improvement – Each report enhances Keepnet’s threat intelligence, refining email filters and phishing simulations.
Learn more about Keepnet’s phishing reporting solutions here.
How to Deploy Phishing Reporting Behavior to Your Employees (Step by Step)
Developing phishing reporting as a secure behavior requires more than awareness—it demands structured deployment, reinforcement, and leadership from within. By embedding reporting into daily workflows and fostering peer-driven engagement, organizations can ensure phishing reporting becomes a natural, habitual action.
Here’s how to deploy phishing reporting behavior effectively with Keepnet’s solutions and an ambassador program.
Step 1: Establish Foundational Phishing Awareness
Begin by ensuring employees can recognize phishing attempts. This foundational step ensures they can identify suspicious emails and red flags.
Key Training Areas:
- Spotting social engineering (urgency, authority, emotional triggers)
- Recognizing mismatched domains and suspicious attachments
- Understanding the consequences of failing to report phishing
- Deploy Keepnet’s Phishing Simulator to expose employees to real-world phishing scenarios, reinforcing recognition through simulations.
Watch the YouTube video below to learn how to create an email phishing campaign.
Step 2: Make Phishing Reporting Simple and Accessible
A simple, seamless reporting process is essential for fostering secure behavior. Complex reporting processes hinder action.
Deployment
- Integrate Keepnet’s Phishing Report Button into Outlook, Google Workspace, and other platforms.
- Automate email routing to Keepnet’s Incident Responder for immediate analysis.
- Promote the tool as a one-click solution for reporting suspicious emails.
Keepnet's Phishing Reporter empowers users to swiftly and seamlessly report suspicious emails, enabling timely analysis by system administrators. This ensures robust protection against potential phishing attacks while fostering proactive security awareness.
Keepnet's Phishing Reporter streamlines the process of identifying and escalating phishing emails, ensuring user-friendly reporting with actionable follow-ups. By empowering employees to delete or retain suspicious emails post-reporting, it enhances organizational security and fosters a proactive security culture.
The Keepnet Human Risk Management Platform allows organizations to manage and customize phishing reporting settings through its intuitive interface. This tool helps streamline user feedback on phishing attempts, supports multiple languages, and offers branding customization, such as setting the Add-in name, logo, and dialog box settings.
Keepnet’s Phishing Report Button makes phishing reporting easy and intuitive, reducing barriers to action.
Step 3: Create a Phishing Ambassador Program
To scale phishing reporting behavior across departments, establish a Phishing Ambassador Program. Ambassadors act as security champions, promoting phishing awareness and encouraging peers to report suspicious emails.
How Ambassadors Support Secure Behavior Deployment:
- Role Models for Security – Ambassadors lead by example, consistently reporting phishing and advocating for secure practices.
- Peer-to-Peer Influence – Employees are more likely to adopt secure behaviors when encouraged by their peers.
- Localized Support – Ambassadors offer guidance and serve as the first point of contact for phishing-related questions.
- Continuous Engagement – They help run internal phishing awareness events, simulations, and workshops.
🔹 Leverage Keepnet’s phishing training and reporting tools to empower ambassadors with real-time phishing insights, helping them drive organization-wide engagement.
Step 4: Automate Phishing Response to Reinforce Behavior
When employees report phishing, swift action reinforces the importance of their contribution. Immediate feedback and response cultivate confidence in the reporting process.
Automated Workflow with Keepnet’s Incident Responder:
- Reported emails are analyzed 48.6x faster by 20+ threat analysis engines.
- Malicious emails are identified and removed from all inboxes 186x faster than manual processes.
- Employees receive automated feedback on their reports, reinforcing secure behavior.
This dashboard showcases reported emails, providing a centralized view of incident analysis and resolution. With features like harmful email detection, automated and manual investigations, and real-time ROI tracking, the platform empowers organizations to streamline email threat management while demonstrating tangible savings in time and money.
As shown in the screenshot above, organizations can get comprehensive information about reported emails, including sender details, geolocation, and blacklist status. It enables security teams to analyze threats effectively with tools like IP blacklist checks, email previews, and URL inspection, ensuring robust incident response and threat mitigation.
- Keepnet’s Incident Responder provides visibility and immediate action, reinforcing positive behavior across the organization.
Step 5: Track and Measure Reporting Behavior
To build phishing reporting behavior as a secure habit, track performance, and monitor key metrics.
Metrics to Monitor with Keepnet:
- Report Rate Over Time – Measure the growth in phishing reports from employees.
- Phishing Dwell Time Reduction – Track how long phishing emails linger before being reported.
- Ambassador Engagement – Assess how phishing ambassadors influence report rates in their teams.
The Phishing Dwell Time Distribution chart illustrates how long target users take to interact with a phishing simulation. It shows a declining trend in user engagement over time, with an average dwell time, highlighting key insights into user response behavior and potential vulnerabilities
Use Keepnet’s Phishing Simulator and reporting analytics to target low-performing departments for additional phishing simulations and awareness campaigns.
Step 6: Reinforce Secure Behavior with Rewards and Recognition
Positive reinforcement accelerates habit formation. Reward employees and ambassadors who consistently report phishing emails.
Reward Strategies:
- Certificates and Recognition – Celebrate phishing ambassadors during company-wide meetings.
- Leaderboard Tracking – Keepnet’s tools can highlight top phishing reporters for additional incentives.
- Gamification and Prizes – Gift cards, bonuses, or extra time off for active phishing reporters and ambassadors.
The screenshot highlights Keepnet's gamification capabilities by presenting an "Overall Score" and simulation-specific performance percentages, encouraging users to engage and improve. The detailed activity timeline tracks actions like reported emails and clicked links, providing real-time feedback to foster continuous learning and motivation.
The example screenshot demonstrates Keepnet's leaderboard capability, highlighting top performers with high scores to encourage healthy competition among users. This gamified feature motivates participants to actively engage in security awareness training and strive for improved rankings, fostering a culture of continuous learning.
Keepnet’s platform tracks phishing reporting behavior, making it easy to identify top performers and celebrate their contributions.
Encouraging and Rewarding Employees for Reporting Phishing
Recognition drives secure behavior. Reward employees who consistently report phishing to encourage engagement:
- Leaderboards and Certificates – Highlight top performers in company-wide announcements
- Incentives – Gift cards, time off, or bonuses for phishing reporters
- Security Awareness Campaigns – Regularly celebrate milestones achieved through phishing simulations and reporting tools
Keepnet’s platform tracks phishing reporters, making it easy to identify and reward employees through automated leaderboards and feedback tools.
How Keepnet Helps Deploy Secure Behavior
Keepnet provides a holistic solution to develop phishing reporting as secure behavior across organizations:
- Simulated Phishing Campaigns – Train employees with real-world scenarios.
- Phishing Report Button – Enable one-click phishing email reporting.
- Incident Responder – Analyze, remove, and respond to phishing emails instantly.
- Metrics and Reporting – Track report rates, dwell time, and simulation performance.
By embedding phishing reporting into daily workflows, Keepnet helps companies build a security culture.
From Knowledge to Action – Building a Security-Conscious Organization
Knowing is not the same as doing. Many employees understand phishing risks, yet when faced with a suspicious email, hesitation, distraction, or fear of being wrong often prevent them from taking action.
To bridge this gap, organizations must focus on deploying secure behaviors, not just teaching security concepts. By embedding phishing reporting into daily workflows, reinforcing positive actions through ambassador programs, and automating response with tools like Keepnet’s Phishing Simulator and Incident Responder, companies can transform knowledge into habitual, secure behavior.
A truly secure organization is built not just on technology, but on a culture of vigilance and accountability. When employees naturally report phishing without second-guessing, you move closer to fostering a security-conscious workforce—one where every individual plays an active role in safeguarding the company.
Empower your employees with Keepnet Human Risk Management Solutions today. Together, let’s turn security awareness into action and build a stronger, more resilient organization.