Adaptive Security Wins Top Industry Honor For Training Employees To Outsmart AI Scams

Key takeaways

• Adaptive Security won CyberSecurity Breakthrough’s 10th annual Security Awareness Training Platform of the Year award, in a competition with thousands of nominations from organizations in more than 20 countries.
• The award highlighted Adaptive’s shift from generic, one-size-fits-all awareness training to personalized, role-specific content aimed at modern threats like AI-generated phishing, deepfake video, cloned voices, and text-based scams.
• The article says deepfake attacks hit U.S. businesses roughly once every five minutes last year, and a person’s voice can now be cloned from just a few seconds of audio, making convincing scams far easier to launch.
• Adaptive’s platform uses open-source intelligence and company-specific data such as phone numbers, headshots, and voice recordings to simulate attacks across email, SMS, and phone that mirror real-world deepfake and AI voice threats.
• Its AI Content Studio can turn any policy or idea into a customized training module in minutes, then automatically assign training by role, department, dynamic group, risk score, or triggered events like failing a simulation, while tracking compliance and audit trails by person, team, or department.
• Adaptive says more than 2,000 organizations use its platform, which also includes a 15-part Conan O’Brien training series on deepfakes, voice phishing, chat scams, and other topics, plus free public tools like a phishing test, threat tracker, and deepfake detection studio.

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The CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards named Adaptive’s platform Security Awareness Training Platform of the Year, recognizing a shift toward hands-on training built for deepfakes, cloned voices, and AI-generated scams.

Adaptive Security has been named Security Awareness Training Platform of the Year in the 10th annual CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards. The honor recognizes the company’s approach to teaching employees how to recognize AI-generated phishing, deepfake video, cloned voices, and text-based scams built with generative AI. CyberSecurity Breakthrough runs an independent program that tracks innovation across the global information security industry, and this year's competition drew thousands of nominations from organizations in more than 20 countries.

CyberSecurity Breakthrough recognized the platform for its shift away from one-size-fits-all training. “Adaptive delivers a rethink of security awareness training for the AI era. Within a generation, deepfakes will be as common an attack vector as email. Legacy security awareness training wasn’t built for this, designed for 2010-era email phishing instead. Sending the same generic module to every employee results in most failing AI-powered attack simulations,” said Steve Johansson, managing director, CyberSecurity Breakthrough.

Johansson pointed to personalization as the deciding factor. “Most security awareness training gets ignored; Adaptive’s doesn’t. By delivering personalized, role-specific content employees find relevant, the result is higher completion rates, better retention, and fewer support tickets. Congratulations on Adaptive winning ‘Security Awareness Training Platform of the Year.’”

The award lands at a moment when generative AI has changed who can run a convincing scam. Deepfake attacks hit United States businesses roughly once every five minutes last year. A person’s voice can now be cloned from a few seconds of audio pulled off a voicemail greeting. Most phone numbers can be found online in seconds. These tools used to require skill and time. Now they require neither.

Adaptive built its platform around one idea. “GenAI handed cyberattack capability to anyone with a laptop,” said Brian Long, co-founder and CEO of Adaptive Security. “The only way to prepare someone for an AI-generated attack is to let them experience one first. That’s what we built this platform to do.” Instead of training employees to spot the email scams of a decade ago, Adaptive trains people using the deepfake video, cloned voice calls, and AI-generated messages attackers are running today.

Here is how it works. Adaptive scans open-source intelligence and company-specific data, including phone numbers, headshots, and voice recordings, to map what an attacker could use against an organization. From there, the platform runs deepfake and AI voice simulations across email, SMS, and phone, built to mirror the exact attacks security teams are seeing in the wild.

The training that follows runs largely on its own. Adaptive’s AI Content Studio turns any policy or idea into a customized module in minutes. The platform assigns that training automatically, based on an employee’s role, department, dynamic group, risk score, or a triggered event, like failing a simulation. Completion tracks itself too. Risk scores and compliance proof roll up by person, team, or department, giving security teams an audit trail for compliance and a live view of where training is landing and where it isn’t.

Adaptive’s content library runs wider than most. A 15-part series featuring Conan O’Brien covers deepfake attacks, advanced voice phishing, and chat-based scams, alongside standard email, SMS, and QR code phishing, password hygiene, and physical security. Additional modules cover safe AI use at work, remote work security, social engineering, and how to manage a team's digital footprint.

Some of that work extends past paying customers. Adaptive built a free training series with youth safety advocate Elliston Berry to teach students how to protect themselves online. The company also runs free public tools open to anyone, including a phishing test, a threat tracker, and a deepfake detection studio.

Long added that the recognition matters to the team behind the product. “Thank you to CyberSecurity Breakthrough. Our job is to make sure employees practice recognizing an AI attack before one ever reaches their inbox, their phone, or their next video call.”

More than 2,000 organizations now run Adaptive to manage their human security programs. The company’s growth tracks a broader shift already underway across the security industry: training built for the AI era is taking the place of training built for a different threat landscape, one email inbox at a time.