Beyond Click Rates: How to Measure the Impact of Phishing Simulations

What’s the most effective way to measure the success of your phishing simulation program?

Click rates are one of the most cited metrics for phishing simulations because they’re easy to track, simple to explain, and widely recognized. But they only tell part of the story.

While knowing how many employees click on a simulated phishing attack can be helpful, it’s only a surface-level indicator.

Click rate doesn’t measure behavior change. It doesn’t reflect reporting habits. And it doesn’t show whether your organization is actually more resilient to the types of phishing attacks that target employees every day.

To build an effective security awareness training program, organizations must expand beyond vanity metrics and focus on deep, actionable indicators that align with real-world outcomes, such as risk reduction, behavior change, and faster incident response.

AI-powered platforms like Adaptive Security are redefining how success is measured, moving from static click tracking to adaptive, behavior-driven intelligence.

Why Click Rate Alone Isn’t Enough

Click rate gives a yes-or-no view of a single moment in time. It doesn’t reveal intent, confidence, or improvement.

For example, a low click rate might simply mean users are deleting emails without understanding why they’re dangerous. Worse, some users may recognize the simulation but fail to report it, giving the illusion of success while still missing key behaviors.

Effective phishing simulations aren’t about tricking employees. The real purpose is to train employees to recognize and respond to threats — and that requires a more holistic view.

Security leaders should be asking:

• Are employees becoming more aware of phishing patterns over time?
• Are threats being reported?
• Are high-risk behaviors declining?
• Are simulation metrics aligning with real-world incident trends?

Organizations need better data to answer these questions. Luckily, several metrics provide a far clearer picture of program effectiveness.

Key Metrics That Matter for Phishing Simulations

Phishing training for employees in 2025 should focus on long-term behavioral insights, not just one-time features.

Here are the metrics that help IT and security teams measure maturity, risk reduction, and user engagement, all while enabling adaptive learning.

Metrics for measuring phishing simulation effectiveness

Reporting rate

Reporting rate tracks the number of employees who actively report phishing simulations. It reflects those who not only identify suspicious communications, such as emails, but also take the necessary action to address them.

When employees report phishing attempts, it:

• Reduces attacker dwell time.
• Signals active engagement in security culture.
• Empowers security operation center (SOC) teams with early warning data.

Yet most organizations underperform in this area. One study found that the rate at which users report simulated phishing emails ranges from 9% to 29%, depending on the industry. The financial services sector boasted the highest average reporting rate at 29%, while education had the lowest at just 9%.

That number rises significantly with user-friendly tools and reinforcement. According to multiple sources, companies that implement a ‘Report Phishing’ button see as much as a 30% increase in reporting rates.

How Adaptive Security helps:

• Enables in-message reporting with a single click.
• Rewards users for accurate reporting.
• Delivers real-time feedback and coaching when an employee reports correctly or fails to act.

A higher reporting rate is a clear sign of a healthy security culture. When employees transition from passive identification to active reporting, they become a vital part of the organization’s defense system.

Risk behavior reduction

Behavioral risk isn’t only about who clicks. It’s about how habits evolve.

Risk behavior reduction focuses on tracking improvements over time: Are employees making fewer risky decisions on a month-over-month and year-over-year basis?

This is a leading indicator of real learning and long-term effectiveness of a phishing simulation program.

Why it matters:

• Demonstrates actual improvement in awareness.
• Correlates with reduced vulnerability to evolving threats.
• Offers measurable return on investment (ROI) for training programs.

Organizations that implement continuous, adaptive phishing training experience dramatic reductions in click rates.

With Adaptive Security:

• Users receive simulations calibrated to their past behavior.
• AI adjusts phishing complexity dynamically.
• Microtraining is deployed immediately after risky actions.

Risk behavior reduction demonstrates the value of a security awareness training program. A consistent decline in risky behaviors, such as clicking on malicious links or failing to report suspicious emails, shows that employees are retaining what they’ve learned.

Repeat offender trends

Most failures during phishing simulations come from a small group of users. Tracking repeat offenders, those who fail multiple simulations, helps identify employees who need targeted intervention.

Why it matters:

• Highlights persistent risk areas.
• Enables tailored remediation strategies.
• Drives down organizational risk by focusing on high-impact employees.

Data from a study published in Sage Journals shows that just 6% of users account for 29% of simulation failures, reinforcing the importance of tracking this subset.

Adaptive Security supports this by:

• Flagging repeat offenders automatically.
• Delivering focused, high-frequency training to employees who need it.
• Tracking behavior improvement longitudinally.

By focusing on the small percentage of users who account for a large number of failures, organizations can allocate resources more efficiently to provide personalized, intensive training.

Role-based risk metrics

Not all users are equally targeted, or equally risky. Role-based risk metrics compare simulation outcomes across departments, seniority levels, and job functions.

As a result, it’s important to prioritize resources and customize training content.

What to look for:

• Departments with high click rates and low reporting.
• Executive-level roles targeted by sophisticated spear phishing.
• Disparities between business units that indicate training gaps.

Ivanti’s research found that executives are four times more likely to fall for targeted phishing attacks compared to their employees.

What Adaptive Security enables:

• Automatic tagging of users by department or function.
• Benchmarking risk by role and adjusting simulation content.
• Board-ready reporting for leadership visibility.

Understanding that risk is not evenly distributed across an organization is key to a sophisticated security strategy. Tailoring simulations and training to the specific threats faced by different roles makes the exercises more relevant and effective.

Simulation-to-incident correlation

The ultimate test of any phishing simulation program is whether it translates to real-world results.

Simulation-to-incident correlation connects user behavior in simulations to actual phishing-related security incidents.

Why it matters:

• Demonstrates true business value of simulations.
• Links awareness efforts to operational outcomes.
• Supports executive reporting and budget justification.

According to research, organizations with behavior-based training experienced a 50% reduction in actual phishing-related incidents over 12 months.

How Adaptive Security ties it together:

• Correlates simulation performance with real phishing alerts and tickets.
• Highlights departments or roles where simulation data predicts real risk.
• Refines future training based on threat intelligence and incident logs.

Simulation-to-incident correlation is where the theoretical value of training meets the practical reality of an organization’s security operations. Security leaders justify their training budgets and demonstrate the program’s ROI by showing the direct link between improved simulation performance and a decrease in actual security incidents.

Program participation and completion rates

Security awareness training is only effective if people actively engage with it. Participation and completion rates measure the number of users who participate in simulations and complete awareness training modules.

It’s a baseline metric, but one with significant implications.

Why it matters:

• Low participation creates blind spots in your defense.
• Supports compliance with frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
• Encourages a culture of accountability.

According to other expert studies, top-performing organizations achieve near-total completion rates when training is paired with intelligent automation and accountability loops. Of course, many cite mandatory compliance as the primary driving factor.

How Adaptive Security helps improve engagement:

• Sends personalized reminders for overdue training.
• Tracks participation trends by department and role.
• Surfaces disengagement risk for early intervention.

While high participation is often driven by compliance requirements, it’s also a foundational element of a strong security posture. Incomplete training leaves gaps in your organization's defenses, as even a single untrained employee can become the entry point for an attack. Ensuring widespread completion means that the entire organization has a consistent baseline of security knowledge.

Phishing incident response time

Speed matters. When a user reports a phishing simulation or a real phishing attempt, the speed at which your IT or security team reacts determines how much damage is avoided.

Phishing incident response time measures that critical window between user action and security intervention.

Why it matters:

• Reduces attacker dwell time and lateral movement.
• Prevents email-based threats from reaching additional targets.
• Demonstrates operational maturity.

Adaptive Security accelerates response by:

• Auto-triaging user-reported simulations.
• Prioritizing high-confidence reports for analyst review.
• Integrating with SOAR tools to automate message quarantine.

The faster a potential threat is identified and contained, the less damage it can do. A slow response can allow an attacker to move through the network, escalate privileges, and exfiltrate data. By measuring and working to improve incident response time, organizations can significantly limit the potential impact of a successful phishing attack.

Connect Phishing Simulation Metrics to Security ROI

When phishing simulations are measured effectively, they do more than test users. Phishing simulations reduce costs, decrease time to containment, and shrink an organization’s threat surface.

Metrics such as repeat offender reduction, reporting improvement, and role-based targeting help demonstrate the effectiveness of your program.

These indicators provide:

• Insights that support further investment in security awareness training.
• Evidence for regulators and auditors, maintaining compliance.
• Clear feedback loops to continuously improve employee behavior.

Most importantly, the metrics shift security awareness from a checkbox to a strategic risk management asset.

Real-world improvements from AI-powered phishing simulations

Adaptive Security: Built to Measure What Matters

Adaptive Security’s next-generation platform for phishing simulations is designed from the ground up to support this metrics framework.

Unlike legacy solutions that rely on static reports, Adaptive Security’s AI-powered system:

• Personalizes simulations and training based on user behavior.
• Surfaces deep analytics on risk trends and role-specific performance.
• Integrates reporting, feedback, and incident data in real time.
• Provides actionable dashboards for IT, HR, and executive stakeholders.

From tracking real-world impact to improving behavioral outcomes, Adaptive Security gives organizations the data and tools necessary to reduce risk — not just clicks.

Move Beyond Vanity Metrics

There’s no question that click rates can be useful.

But they don’t tell you if your workforce is learning. They don’t reveal who’s at risk. And they won’t help prevent the next data breach from a phishing attack.

If you want your phishing training to deliver real value, look deeper at reporting rates, behavior change, response speed, and role-based insights. Together, they’re the metrics that demonstrate ROI, support compliance, and make your workforce safer.