10 Email Security Best Practices That Actually Change Behavior

Most employees already know not to click suspicious links.

They’ve sat through the annual training, passed the quiz, maybe even earned a badge. But knowing isn’t the problem. Reacting under pressure is.

It’s very rarely a lack of knowledge. The challenge isn’t awareness - the challenge is execution. People are busy, switching contexts, focused on their own domain. They’re not in a secure mindset when the risky moment hits.

That’s the gap we see across organizations: the moment of risk doesn’t look like a training module. It looks like a message from your CFO about a last-minute wire transfer. Or a DocuSign file you were expecting.

So when teams ask us about email security best practices, what they really want is this:

• How do we help users spot real threats, not just rehearse hypotheticals?
• How do we build reflexes, not just awareness?

You need to meet people where they’re at. Just telling them what they should do doesn’t build the reflexes they’ll need when a phishing scam hits at the worst possible time.

This post unpacks what we’ve learned across thousands of phishing simulations and a mountain of user feedback. It’s a playbook for email security behavior change - one that connects training to real risk reduction.

Struggling to shape user behavior? The podcast episode below unpacks one of cybersecurity’s most polarizing dilemmas: what should be done with repeat offenders in phishing simulations?

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1. Train users to spot real-world threats, not just generic phishing templates

You need to make phishing training real (but responsibly real).

A lot of training still hinges on the “don’t click suspicious links” genre of advice. That’s fine, but it’s not enough. People already know phishing is bad. What they need is muscle memory - instinctive responses forged through exposure to realistic, emotionally resonant scenarios. That’s where personalization comes in.

The most effective simulations use attacks that mimic actual vendors, execs, or internal tools. These aren’t just templates, they’re narrative-driven, highly contextualized emails that feel plausible in the middle of a busy day. Think: a DocuSign request referencing last week’s board meeting. The goal isn’t to trick people - it’s to build reflexes that hold up under pressure.

The key here is contextual realism. The phishing simulations that actually shift behavior are the ones grounded in your organization’s actual tooling, tone, and timing. And the bar isn’t just “did they click?” anymore... we’re looking at how fast someone reports the threat, whether they check a second channel for verification, or whether they spot subtle signs like domain mismatches.

Even seasoned cyber experts can be caught off guard if the right phish comes at the right time, with the right emotional trigger. Just because someone’s security-savvy doesn’t mean they’re bulletproof in a real-world workflow. timing and stress matter.

Realism shouldn’t mean cruelty. There’s a difference between impersonating your CFO and pretending to be someone’s spouse.

Below you can see what happens when users receive a simulation in their inbox.

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2. Make reporting easy and blame-free

Reporting is where good instincts meet operational follow-through... and most orgs are unintentionally tanking both.

The problem? Too many channels, too little clarity. Outlook buttons, spam filters, help desk tickets - we’ve seen end users paralyzed by choice or totally unsure what their action actually triggered.

As one security leader we spoke to put it, “We haven’t drummed it into people’s brains to use a particular button” - and the result is fragmented data, slower detection, and frustrated SOC teams.

So what does good look like? One UX-standard button. Easy to find, easy to use, and deeply integrated into the flow of work. That’s what actually scales.

Make it easy, simple, and quick… and particularly from the cultural side, blame-free. When it works, the loop is tight and rewarding. Users know something happened because they acted. They get feedback, they see threats disappear, and they’re more likely to engage next time.

People should feel safe to report something even if they’re wrong. That’s a cultural shift as much as a technical one. And if you're seeing inconsistent reports or users defaulting to “mark as spam,” it’s not a motivation problem. It’s a UX problem.

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3. Make simulations adaptive to keep engagement high

Do phishing simulations still work after 12 months?

This is something we hear a lot from admins using legabcy solutions. The answer is yes... but only if they evolve.

A year in, leadership starts asking: “Are we still getting value here?” Often, the answer feels like “meh” - not because phishing simulations don’t work, but because the simulations themselves haven’t changed.

Static difficulty is whats usually at fault here. If you're running the same type of phishing attack templates from month 3 to month 13, of course engagement drops. You’ve trained muscle memory and then asked nothing new of it.

The fix is adaptive progression. Smart simulation engines don’t just randomize, they ladder. Difficulty scales with user behavior. Riskier roles (finance, HR, exec assistants) face more nuanced attack vectors. Repeat clickers don’t get punished, instead they get custom routes. New joiners see low-friction phishing schemes. Veterans get challenged.

You’ve got to train the mental muscle memory, not just to recognize red flags, but to act on them quickly, even under pressure.

Organizations that use individualized learning paths - where simulation content adapts based on behavior and real-world phishing attacks - actually see engagement increase after the 12-month mark.

That’s where Hoxhunt's agentic reasoning engine comes in.

Most platforms randomize templates. We model intent. Hoxhunt’s adaptive engine doesn’t just escalate difficulty - it analyzes user behavior, attack trends, and threat context to deliver simulations that actually challenge.

It’s not just personalization. It’s agency.

Simulations shift based on what each user has seen, how they responded, and what’s happening across the threat landscape right now.

Read more about how it works here.

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4. Understand the biggest threats right now to ensure you're training for them

The real phishing attacks hitting inboxes in 2025 are clean, timely, and increasingly difficult to filter. They often bypass traditional spam filters and email gateways by design - exploiting psychological levers instead of technical ones.

Here’s what’s actually showing up across the threat landscape right now:

• QR code phishing: Scannable payloads embedded in PDF email attachments, tricking users into scanning with personal mobile devices, often bypassing corporate email filtering and antivirus software altogether.
• Vendor impersonation: Classic business email compromise plays, often mimicking known suppliers and using just-in-time invoicing language to bypass suspicion.
• SSO/MFA fatigue attacks: Credential theft via multiple rapid-fire login attempts, relying on the user to approve a prompt just to make it stop.
• Document capture phishing: SharePoint, DocuSign, and cloud drive impersonation, with fake but believable file names ("Year-End_Bonus_Review.docx") and spoofed email addresses that slip past the sender policy framework.

These aren't theoretical. They're happening now. At Hoxhunt, we create training content based on the real-life attack vectors we see cybercriminals currently using.

The payloads are increasingly hidden - often in attachments or even just in the psychological framing. That’s what’s getting past filters.

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5. Make training relevant and gamified if you want employees to take it seriously

Why don’t employees take security awareness training seriously Because most of it just isn't engaging.

Long videos. Boring quizzes. Compliance checklists disguised as content. If that’s your email security program, of course employees are tuning out. No one learns vigilance from a 45-minute slideshow on email policies and the importance of strong passwords. That’s not employee training - that’s box-ticking.

People don’t change behavior because they’re told to. They change behavior because it feels relevant. Immediate. Sometimes even fun.

What actually gets traction? Microtraining. Context-specific nudges. Gamified challenges that drop into Microsoft Teams. Leaderboards. Voluntary engagement driven by dopamine, not dread.

This is also where adaptive difficulty matters. Not everyone needs the same lesson. A user who falls for spear phishing attempts twice in one quarter doesn’t need a GDPR refresher... they need targeted simulations and follow-up content that actually closes that gap.

The deeper point: human-centric security starts with respect. If your users are ignoring you, it’s not because they don’t care about cybersecurity threats. It’s because they’ve learned your training doesn’t care about them.

Think gamification is just a gimmick? Here's what is really looks like in Hoxhunt.

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6. Measure success beyond just click rates

Click rates are the floor, not the ceiling. They tell you something... but mostly whether someone got tricked, not whether they’re learning. And in modern email security programs, that’s nowhere near enough.

If you want real signal, track what happens after the phish lands.

We’re talking about metrics that tie back to behavioral change and incident readiness:

• Report-to-click ratio: Are people recognizing and escalating phishing scams, or just stumbling into them?
• Time to report: How fast do users act after spotting a suspicious email?
• True positive rate: Are users spotting actual phishing emails, or just hammering the spam button on every marketing newsletter?
• Repeat clicker reduction: Are your riskiest users learning over time? (Hint: with adaptive employee training, they often do.)
• Department-level engagement: Some functions carry more risk. Legal, finance, IT - if those teams aren’t engaged, your threat surface is still wide open.

You can complete a simulation or a course and learn nothing. A single click doesn’t always mean carelessness and a non-click doesn’t always mean success.

There’s a cultural signal here too. In organizations with strong reporting behaviors, users don’t try to cover mistakes - they escalate. That’s not just process maturity. That’s the product of trust, clear email best practices, and systems that encourage quick action without fear.

The goal isn’t just fewer clicks - it’s better instincts, faster feedback, and fewer chances for malicious software to dig into your environment before anyone notices.

Below you can see what reporting looks like within the Hoxhunt dashboard.

7. Integrate phishing simulations into your incident response workflow

Can phishing simulations actually reduce risk... or just create noise?

Done wrong, phishing simulations feel like a spray-and-pray tactic that's easy to ignore, annoying to your users, and overwhelming for your SOC. But when they’re wired into your broader email security and incident response infrastructure, they’re one of the highest-leverage tools on the table.

Simulations reduce risk not just by training users, but by stress-testing your internal systems. A good program surfaces who reports what, how fast it’s escalated, and where bottlenecks in triage live. But that only works if the reporting loop actually connects to your SOC tooling, and incident playbooks.

Simulations aren’t just user training - they’re a way to test and refine your detection and triage systems too.

Without that bridge, simulations can flood your security team with noise like spam emails, ambiguous reports, or redundant alerts. But with it? You get live insights on real behavior.

There’s noise at first. But SOC teams overwhelmingly prefer noise to silence... because silence means you missed the threat.

This is where automation comes in. Routing simulation reports through a threat defense platform or integrated cloud email security tool lets you auto-triage, apply sender authentication rules, and even verify sender’s IP reputation, without burning analyst time.

That means fewer false positives, quicker containment of real phishing scams, and less manual work per alert.

The shift here is subtle but massive: simulations shouldn’t live in a vacuum. They’re part of your detection fabric and a way to shrink your attack surface, not expand your inbox clutter.

Want to see what this looks like in practice? You can take a quick tour of our incident orchestration below.

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8. Automate and adapt security training to scale with limited resources

Most awareness programs are under-resourced. One person, often thousands of users, zero time. Bespoke phishing simulations and hand-curated training content? That’s great in theory. In practice, you need automation that works without constant babysitting.

The best programs don’t rely on admins to pick from a library. They rely on systems that learn. That means training content that adapts to the user - not the other way around.

Unless your whole company fits in the back of a car, you’re not scaling manually. You need a platform that builds individual learning paths at scale and then runs itself.

That’s the operational best practice here: treat your email security program like any other enterprise system.

Look for:

• Role-aware content distribution: so legal, HR, and finance don’t get the same playbook.
• Adaptive difficulty: especially for repeat offenders and power users.
• Real-time data: from your secure email gateway or endpoint protection tooling feeding back into training.

This isn’t just about ease of use, it’s about resilience. With phishing scams evolving fast and social engineering techniques growing more subtle, static training becomes stale within weeks.

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9. Handle repeat offenders with pattern recognition, not punishment

What should we do about repeat offenders in phishing simulations?

It’s a common question. But punishment doesn’t build resilience. It builds fear, avoidance, and silence.

What actually works is a shift in mindset: from blame to understanding, from “why did they fail?” to “what made this fail for them?”

Seek first to understand, and then to be understood. If you don’t understand their motivations for doing or not doing something, you’re shooting in the dark.

The vast majority of people don’t act in malice. They act because they don’t know the correct action, or they don’t know alternatives - or they just don’t understand the implications of attacks.

That’s the principle behind modern behavioral interventions:

• Use adaptive training paths for those struggling the most
• Trigger coaching based on patterns, not punishment
• Segment intent from ignorance - because the solution to each is wildly different

And if you’re lucky enough to reduce the group to a manageable size? You can really get to the bottom of whether the general approach that’s working for most people just isn’t landing with them.

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10. Push back on the myth of “zero clicks”

What should we say to leadership that wants ‘zero clicks’?

You’ll hear it in almost every executive debrief: “Shouldn’t we be aiming for zero?” And the short answer is no. That’s not how behavior change works. That’s not how training works.

Phishing simulations aren’t pass/fail exams. They’re exercises. And some clicks are not just expected - they’re essential. A low click rate on an easy phish doesn’t prove your org is secure... it just proves the scenario was weak.

The real goal isn’t to eliminate clicks entirely. It’s to:

• Catch real phishing scams faster
• Encourage more timely, accurate reporting
• Reduce risk over time through smarter habits

When leadership demands a zero-click outcome, they’re framing simulations as testing. You need to reframe it as training. And just like in the gym - if no one ever fails a rep, the workout’s too easy.

We also know that click rate never goes to zero and it shouldn’t. A zero-click environment likely means people aren’t being challenged, or worse, they’re afraid to engage.

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Why Hoxhunt is built for behavior-driven email security

Most awareness training fails not because users don’t care - but because the tools aren’t designed for how people actually learn.

Hoxhunt's phishing training was built from the ground up to change that.

We don’t just push out phishing simulations, we adapt to each individual’s behavior, role, and risk exposure. That means simulations that evolve over time, microtrainings that land when they matter, and feedback loops that turn mistakes into progress. Automatically.

It’s the system behind the outcomes:

• Simulation content drawn from live attack intelligence: including QR code phishing, SSO abuse, vendor impersonation, deepfake attacks and more.
• Role-specific risk modeling: so your finance lead and junior engineer aren’t on the same path.
• Integrated ecosystem: seamless integration into Microsoft 365, Gmail etc.

And critically, it’s designed to run itself - no need to manually sort templates or chase reports. You get a training program that actually trains, at the scale your team needs.

Using our approach, email security can be measurably improved. Employees can be trained to recognize and report social engineering attacks with a 6x improvement in 6 months, and reduce the number of phishing incidents per organization by 86%.

Before switching to Hoxhunt, AES only saw around 10% of employees regularly engaging with training, and a scant few were actually reporting phishing simulations.

After implementing a more engaging program, reporting rates jumped to 65-70% in under a year.

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Email security best practices FAQ

Why aren’t our phishing simulations changing user behavior?

Because most simulations aren’t realistic or relevant. Users don’t respond to obvious spam emails or outdated templates. What works is behaviorally adaptive training - contextualized, role-specific, and reflective of actual phishing scams targeting your org.

How do we train users to detect modern phishing threats?

Swap the clichés for what attackers are actually using: QR code phishing, business email compromise, SSO fatigue abuse, and document-based social engineering. Training should evolve with the attack surface, not stay locked in old assumptions.

How do we keep simulations effective after 6–12 months?

By making them harder. Programs that dynamically adjust difficulty - based on user behavior and threat trends - maintain engagement and drive long-term habit formation. Static difficulty? That’s what causes awareness fatigue.

What’s the right frequency for phishing simulations?

It depends on your users, but consistency beats intensity. Monthly is a good baseline - especially if simulations vary in style and sophistication. Just avoid predictable “first Tuesday” patterns. Randomness builds better instincts.

What’s the best way to get users to report suspicious emails?

Use a single, unified button. Give users instant feedback. Make the process fast, visible, and rewarding. And always emphasize: it’s better to report and be wrong than stay silent and be right.

How do we deal with user complaints about fake phishing emails?

It’s a culture issue, not a content one. Explain why simulations matter. Keep them blame-free. Don’t tie failures to punishments - tie success to recognition.