How Audiomob Turned Up Human Threat Detection—Without Turning Up Security Overhead

A Lean Team Playing on a Global Stage

Audiomob was founded to solve a problem in mobile apps: advertising should not interrupt the mobile experience.

Audiomob lets advertisers reach their audiences in mobile apps without negatively affecting user retention. Today, its platform spans 20,000 apps, 30 billion monthly bid requests, and 500 million monthly active users across 160 countries.

Ville Laitinen, Head of Engineering, sought a security awareness solution that would not distract employees from their work. Efficiency is essential at the startup. Every hour spent administering security is an hour taken from building and operating a complex global advertising platform.

Small headcount does not mean small cyber risk. Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report analyzed 7,152 confirmed breaches at organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees, and the human element appeared in 45%. Smaller organizations face many of the same threats as enterprises, often with fewer specialized resources to manage them.

“We pride ourselves on being a very lean team. With engineering also comes responsibility for security across the board.”

— Ville Laitinen, Head of Engineering, Audiomob

Hypergrowth, Bigger Target

Audiomob’s rapid growth, awards, and press coverage raised its profile with customers—and attackers. Employees began receiving suspicious messages almost weekly, including emails that appeared to come from company leaders.

Laitinen used biweekly town halls to explain attacks and share examples. The sessions helped, but they could not provide the frequent, hands-on practice people needed. Nor did Audiomob want engineers spending significant time creating simulations, monitoring campaigns, and maintaining another security system.

The company needed a program that could improve recognition and reporting continuously while largely running itself.

“We had grown really fast, received a lot of press, and won awards. All of that is good, but it also puts you on the map in ways you might not want. We were seeing phishing attacks increase.”

— Ville Laitinen

Security Training That Doesn’t Interrupt the Experience

Laitinen had experienced Hoxhunt as an employee at a previous company and remembered enjoying it. When Audiomob evaluated the market, Hoxhunt stood out for two reasons: the product and training continued to evolve, and the program would not require constant attention from his team.

Rollout matched that promise. Audiomob introduced Hoxhunt during a town hall using materials supplied by Hoxhunt. The onboarding experience then guided employees through the program. Laitinen reported exactly zero technical challenges.

Hoxhunt now delivers simulations, microtraining, and new threat scenarios with little input from Audiomob. The company can keep its people practicing without forcing engineering to babysit the program.

“Hoxhunt does a job we wanted done without requiring much from us from a maintenance point of view. It basically runs itself.”

— Ville Laitinen

Gamification Became an Office Hit

The biggest surprise was not that engineers engaged. It was that everyone did.

Employees compare stars and scores, discuss simulations, and admit when a convincing message caught them. Founders have called Laitinen to share Hoxhunt emails they thought were especially good. Audiomob reinforces that energy with quarterly competitions, town-hall recognition, and prizes ranging from gift cards to iPads.

Phish-a-Friend became an office-wide hit. Employees talked about it for weeks and asked whether they could send more scenarios or customize the templates. The game mechanics created a shared security conversation across technical and nontechnical roles.

That engagement translated into behavior. Laitinen estimates that threat reporting multiplied several times over, while the organization’s awareness of phishing became “night and day” compared with where it began. Audiomob has since enabled Hoxhunt’s more difficult Spicy Mode to keep the experience challenging as employee skills improve.

“I expected the engineers to be on top of the leaderboards. What surprised me was how many nontechnical people got into the game—comparing scores, asking how many stars others had, and competing with each other.”

— Ville Laitinen

Employee Reports Became a Live Threat Feed

Before Hoxhunt, reports of suspicious emails arrived sporadically through informal messages to the security team. Employees were unsure whether an email was legitimate or whether the CEO had really sent it.

Continuous practice made people better at recognizing and reporting the real thing. Those reports now give Audiomob visibility into threats that reach employee inboxes, turning the workforce into an active layer of detection.

On multiple occasions, Audiomob has used the Hoxhunt threat feed to identify a malicious message and remove it from inboxes across the company. One employee’s good decision can therefore help protect the entire organization from a potentially serious incident.

“There have been multiple occasions where we wiped something from the whole company’s inboxes based on the Hoxhunt threat feed. We were able to avert a problem that potentially could have been very big.”

— Ville Laitinen

Built to Scale Without Adding Security Headcount

Audiomob wants revenue and platform activity to grow much faster than headcount. That requires systems that scale without demanding a matching increase in operational work.

Hoxhunt provides that leverage. It gives new employees a clear onboarding path, keeps experienced employees challenged, and supplies management with engagement, failure, and reporting data. The program also supports Audiomob’s broader effort to strengthen its security and compliance foundation as the business grows.

For Laitinen, human risk management is not something reserved for large enterprises with dedicated awareness teams. Smaller companies also need a way to reduce what they do not know—especially when a small team operates technology with global reach.

“It’s hard for me to think of who could not benefit from it. You don’t need to be a technical startup. It could be any company that needs to increase security awareness. Hoxhunt does its job for us.”

— Ville Laitinen

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