An employee in a Zoom meeting hears the CFO's voice request an urgent wire transfer. The voice is a clone. Attackers now combine cloned audio, fake messaging accounts, and public video footage to rebuild trusted identities (opens in new tab) across the channels employees use every day.
Without the right defenses, the economics favor the attacker. AI-automated phishing emails reached a 54% click-through rate (opens in new tab), compared with 12% for standard phishing attempts, and a human element appeared in 60% of confirmed breaches (opens in new tab).
Regulators are moving on the same problem. The NYDFS vishing advisory (opens in new tab) published in February 2026 directed regulated entities to review identity verification procedures and targeted awareness training.
For some regulated industries, multi-channel simulation is becoming an increasingly important component of security and compliance. Most traditional awareness programs remain primarily email-focused while attacks increasingly arrive by voice, SMS, and video call.
This guide compares seven security awareness training vendors across three criteria: simulations built from live attack telemetry across the channels employees actually use, training content that fits each employee's role, and per-employee measurement of durable behavior change.
Key takeaways
- AI-driven social engineering now spans voice, video, SMS, and messaging channels, so email-focused simulation programs may leave material portions of the modern attack surface untested.
- The February 2026 NYDFS vishing advisory and notifications to top-tier banks have increased the compliance relevance of multi-channel simulation for certain regulated organizations.
- Vendor differentiation in 2026 comes down to three criteria: simulations built from live attack telemetry across the channels employees actually use, training content that fits role and policy, and per-employee risk tracking that measures durable behavior change.
- The seven vendors covered span distinct buyer profiles: Doppel's closed-loop multi-channel simulation, KnowBe4's deep compliance catalog, Adaptive Security's deepfake focus, Hoxhunt's gamified reporting culture, Proofpoint's email telemetry integration, SoSafe's European data handling, and Arctic Wolf's fully managed delivery model.
What separates effective security awareness training in 2026
Three structural properties separate more comprehensive 2026 programs from compliance-video libraries:
- Simulations built from live attack telemetry across the channels employees work in.
- Training content that fits role and policy.
- Per-employee measurement of durable behavior change.
The definitions below clarify what each layer of a modern program covers.
Human risk management is the umbrella discipline: it combines security awareness training, phishing simulation, and risk modeling, quantifying each employee's risk across simulation performance, real-world security events, role-based exposure, and digital footprint, then tracking whether behavior changes over time.
Within that umbrella, security awareness training is the teaching layer that delivers structured content to build recognition skills, though the term often stretches to cover simulation as well.
A phishing simulation is the measurement layer: an employee's response to a controlled lure, whether they click, report, or ignore. Modern security teams increasingly evaluate the full human risk management stack, which is, in many ways, the new era of security awareness training.
Against that baseline, evaluate each vendor on three properties that help determine whether training supports behavior change:
- Simulations built from live attack telemetry, across core employee channels. Programs that pull simulation content from active threat intelligence give employees practice against the lures currently targeting their organization. Attacks now span voice, messaging, and video, so a program that simulates those channels tests the attack surface employees actually face.
- Training content that fits role and policy. Role-specific courses, policy-aware lessons, and coaching delivered at the moment of failure teach the response each employee's job actually requires.
- Per-employee adaptation that measures durable behavior change. Risk profiles that track responses across channels and over time reveal whether each employee's behavior is improving.
The seven vendor profiles that follow test each platform against these three properties.
1. Doppel
Doppel is the AI-native Social Engineering Defense platform that unifies Digital Risk Protection, Human Risk Management, and Email Security through the Doppel Superintelligence Layer. Its Human Risk Management products deliver training, simulation, and risk modeling across the communication platforms employees use regularly, and the platform protects some of the world’s top organizations, including Coinbase and OpenAI.
Doppel detects and correlates live attacker activity through Doppel Brand Protection and Executive Protection, then converts that external telemetry into employee simulation and training campaigns with a single click.
When employees report suspicious messages, Phishing Triage investigates and resolves them automatically, so a growing reporting culture may avoid turning into an abuse-inbox backlog.
It gives security leaders a clear view of risk within their organization by scoring based on simulation difficulty, recency, type of failure, and external risk signals such as personal device logins, suspicious activity, and more.
Key features
- Simulations across voice calls, SMS, email, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Telegram.
- One-click threat-to-simulation conversion from Digital Risk Protection into Human Risk Management workflows.
- Vibe Phishing Simulations for prompt-based generation of messages, landing pages, and coaching plans.
- Security awareness training content library and AI Content Builder for training tailored to a company’s roles, industry, and observed behavior.
- Risk Modeling and Insights with per-employee risk profiles and behavior tracking over time.
- Phishing Triage designed to automatically review and remediate employee-submitted emails in seconds.
Pros
- Doppel's closed loop with its external detection feed can convert threats detected in the wild into timely workforce drills.
- AI agents simulate attacks across voice calls, SMS, email, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom with delivery controls designed for multi-channel simulations, including deepfake or stock voice clones, and support multistep scenarios that move from voice to follow-on phishing messages to help scale red teaming and support cyber resilience.
- Vibe Phishing Simulation is designed to streamline campaign creation. Paste a login URL or type a natural-language prompt, and the platform generates the full campaign and coaching plan.
- Recon AI Agents pull company-specific public context and generate custom, OSINT-backed, and threat-informed templates available in the customer's instance from initial deployment.
Cons
- No public pricing; engagements run through the Doppel sales team or a partner.
- Human Risk Management is one pillar of a broader Social Engineering Defense platform. Each pillar deploys on its own to address specific needs, but organizations seeking a standalone training-focused tool will see more platform than they plan to use.
- The compliance course catalog is younger than those of vendors that have accumulated regulatory training libraries for a decade or more.
Pricing
Custom pricing; contact sales.
Who is Doppel best for?
Enterprises building a comprehensive human risk management program: resilience across the channels employees use at work, simulations sophisticated and customizable enough to match real attacks, and less manual effort from the security team.
Teams that need to scale red teaming, security awareness training, or simulation. Programs that need only annual compliance modules will find the platform scope more than the job requires.
2. KnowBe4 HRM+
KnowBe4 is a long-established vendor whose HRM+ platform combines training content, phishing simulation, real-time coaching through SecurityCoach, and crowdsourced anti-phishing through PhishER Plus.
KnowBe4's center of gravity is training content: a security awareness and compliance catalog accumulated over more than a decade, which is the depth the rest of this lineup measures itself against.
Key features
- Broad training library with security and compliance content.
- SecurityCoach for event-triggered coaching through integrated security platforms.
- PhishER Plus for phishing-response workflows and crowdsourced threat data.
- AIDA-branded automation features for campaign creation and personalization.
Pros
- An extensive course catalog in this lineup. The Advanced tier includes 1,000+ content pieces in the Advanced Training Library (opens in new tab)
- KnowBe4 publishes per-seat pricing, one of the few vendors in this comparison to do so, which makes budgeting possible before a sales conversation
- PhishER Plus crowdsources phishing threat data across KnowBe4's customer base, and SecurityCoach delivers real-time coaching triggered by email security events from integrated platforms
Cons
- Voice simulation launched on July 30, 2026 (opens in new tab), giving buyers a shorter deployment track record to evaluate than its established email simulations.
- Gates its full AI Defense Agent suite (opens in new tab) (AIDA), including the Orchestration Agent and Deepfake Training Content Agent, to the SAT Advanced tier (opens in new tab). SAT Foundation includes only "select AI features." Multi-channel and AI-driven capability both concentrate at the top of the pricing ladder.
- Risk measurement has historically centered on training completions and email-simulation click rates. KnowBe4 only began folding voice-simulation results into a unified Risk Score in July 2026 (opens in new tab), so multi-channel risk scoring is new and has a short track record.
- Risk measurement is primarily based on training completions and email-simulation click rate metrics.
Who is KnowBe4 best for?
Compliance-driven programs that need broad course coverage, transparent pricing, and mature administration at scale. Teams whose primary exposure is multi-channel AI-driven social engineering should test the simulation side against newer entrants before committing.
3. Adaptive Security
Adaptive Security is a platform built around preparing employees for AI-era threats, with an emphasis on training content. Its simulations center on email, including AI-generated spear phishing, with support for callback vishing and smishing.
Deepfake video is geared primarily to the training side of the platform: an AI Content Creator generates role-specific modules, and editable deepfake personas make those modules interactive. The company was founded in 2024 (opens in new tab), so the platform took shape after the generative-AI shift.
Key features
- AI-threat simulation across email, with support for callback vishing and smishing.
- AI Content Creator creates custom, role-specific training modules.
- Editable deepfake personas embedded in interactive training modules.
Pros
- Deepfake video creation is available at scale in the platform.
- Simulations span multi-channel scenarios such as smishing and vishing.
- Training content is easily customizable.
Cons
- Launched in 2024 (opens in new tab), barely two years of enterprise production history to evaluate against vendors with a decade or more of deployment data.
- Scope centers on internal training and simulation workflows; it does not include an integrated external threat detection feed to automatically convert live, brand-targeted attacks in the wild into simulation drills.
- G2's own review tagging (opens in new tab) flags Group Management as a recurring complaint category, with reviewers describing campaign-build group settings as buggy and requiring workaround steps (creating the group before the campaign) rather than working as advertised.
- Simulation deliverability consistency should be validated, and it relies primarily on callback or textback scenarios.
- Enterprise administrative self-service is still maturing. Reviewers (opens in new tab) note that certain group management workflows, user record customization, and automated training assignment controls require manual steps or vendor support rather than full self-service administration.
Who is Adaptive Security best for?
Teams who prefer to be hands-on in creating and running every campaign, and whose board-level concern is engagement with training content. Buyers needing decade-deep compliance catalogs, full multi-channel simulation, or an external threat intelligence feed should plan to pair the platform with other tooling.
4. Hoxhunt
Hoxhunt is a phishing training platform that delivers individualized micro-training through gamification. It can send phishing simulations on a recurring cadence, and calibrates difficulty to each employee's demonstrated skill level. Employees report simulations and real threats through the same button, which feeds a measurable reporting culture.
Hoxhunt also describes a Deepfake Attack Simulation capability that runs training scenarios featuring video deepfakes of managers or executives.
Key features
- Dynamic phishing simulations with individualized difficulty tuning.
- Gamified user experience and reporting workflows.
- Shared reporting button for simulations and real threats.
- Deepfake Attack preparedness for executive or manager impersonation scenarios.
Pros
- The gamified reward loop is designed to encourage voluntary participation and reporting throughout the year.
Cons
Who is Hoxhunt best for?
Organizations whose dominant risk is email phishing and whose strategy is an engagement-led reporting culture. Teams facing coordinated voice, SMS, and meeting-based attacks will need to validate those channels carefully or supplement with additional tooling.
5. Proofpoint ZenGuide
ZenGuide is Proofpoint's human risk management product and the rebranded successor to Proofpoint Security Awareness Training (PSAT). The platform delivers learning through its DICE framework (Detect, Intervene, Change behavior, Evaluate). Proofpoint presents ZenGuide as using its email security telemetry and People Risk Explorer to identify high-risk employees, including Very Attacked People (VAPs), and trigger targeted interventions.
Key features
- Human risk management integrated with Proofpoint email telemetry.
- DICE framework for detecting, intervening, changing behavior, and evaluating outcomes.
- People Risk Explorer and VAP-based targeting.
- ThreatFlip workflow for creating simulations from malicious emails.
Pros
- Risk-based targeting built on Proofpoint's email telemetry focuses training on the employees identified as more frequently targeted using VAP data and Adaptive Pathways.
- ThreatFlip converts malicious emails into safe, sanitized simulation templates, a process Proofpoint describes as one-click.
- Enterprise-grade reporting and dashboards fit existing Proofpoint administrative workflows.
Cons
- ZenGuide's (opens in new tab) signature differentiator, VAP-based targeting, only works if the customer already runs Proofpoint's broader email security platform. Buyers evaluating ZenGuide (opens in new tab)as a standalone human-risk tool outside the Proofpoint ecosystem lose the feature the product is built around.
- ZenGuide's own simulation engine, ThreatFlip (opens in new tab), converts captured malicious emails into phishing simulations: an email-only delivery mechanism. Proofpoint's materials discuss Teams and Slack as channels employees are attacked through, but describe no native voice, SMS, or meeting-platform simulation capability to test them.
Who is Proofpoint best for?
Existing Proofpoint email security customers who want risk scoring and training in the same operational pane. Buyers in other ecosystems lose the integration that differentiates it.
6. SoSafe
SoSafe is a behavioral-science-driven vendor based in Germany with ISO 27001 and TISAX certifications. Its Human Risk OS platform monitors, measures, and mitigates human risk using telemetry from the customer's existing tools, and produces a unified Security Index risk score per organization.
Key features
- Behavioral-science-led training and phishing simulation.
- Human Risk OS with behavior sensors and a unified Security Index.
- European data handling emphasis and localization across major European languages.
- Sofie conversational assistant for employee security questions.
Pros
- European data residency and GDPR-first architecture may be a strong fit for EU-regulated buyers.
- Localization depth across European languages and cultural contexts supports European deployment needs, with platform content in 33 languages.
- Sofie, SoSafe’s conversational AI assistant, gives employees a conversational channel for security questions at the moment of doubt.
Cons
Who is SoSafe best for?
European and multilingual organizations that need localized content and EU data handling built into the platform architecture. Teams wanting deep simulation customization or multi-channel voice and meeting-based simulation should test those workflows first.
7. Arctic Wolf Managed Security Awareness
Arctic Wolf Managed Security Awareness is a fully managed training service within Arctic Wolf's security operations portfolio, built on Habitu8 and delivered by the Concierge Security Team. The program provides short, scheduled microlearning sessions and automated phishing simulations with point-of-failure coaching.
Key features
- Fully managed program delivery, with campaign design, scheduling, and reporting handled by Arctic Wolf.
- Concierge Security Team support model.
- Short-format microlearning with automated phishing simulations and immediate coaching.
- Aurora Platform integration connecting awareness data to broader security operations.
Pros
- Managed delivery can give lean IT teams a structured program without requiring dedicated headcount for campaign design or scheduling.
- The consistent short-session format can support consistent participation by giving employees predictable time commitment.
- Pairing with Arctic Wolf's MDR services connects awareness data to the customer's broader security operations through the Aurora Platform.
Cons
- Arctic Wolf's own product documentation (opens in new tab) confirms the program delivers awareness sessions, quizzes, phishing simulations, and compliance training entirely by email. No voice, SMS, or meeting-based simulation channel is described anywhere in the product materials.
- The managed-service model limits how quickly a team can adjust scope or campaign design themselves. Changes route through Arctic Wolf's Concierge team and delivery schedule rather than self-service configuration.
Who is Arctic Wolf best for?
Lean IT, teams without dedicated awareness staff who want a vendor-managed program, especially existing Arctic Wolf MDR customers. Security teams that want hands-on control of simulation content or multi-channel simulation capabilities may need a different model.
How to choose the right security awareness training vendor
The right vendor follows from four things: the channels your workforce is attacked through, the simulation realism you can verify in a pilot, the administration model your team can sustain, and the evidence of behavior change you need to produce.
- Map your attacked channels. Pull six to twelve months of reported phish and helpdesk social-engineering logs, including any voice or SMS incident reports. If a meaningful share of social engineering attempts reaches employees through voice or SMS, require that your shortlisted vendors simulate those channels with the same fidelity as email.
- Pilot simulation realism in your own environment. Test each shortlisted platform against your branded login pages, your executives' public footprint, and your departments' real workflows. A simulation that does not elicit representative responses during the pilot may not generate the behavioral data needed to evaluate the program.
- Match the administration model to your team. Decide whether you need autonomous agent-run campaigns, a fully managed service, or hands-on program control. A lean security team that selects a platform requiring constant campaign design may find the program difficult to sustain.
- Verify measurement beyond click rates. Require per-employee behavior trajectories and reporting-rate trends over time, with risk scoring that ingests signals from the rest of your stack, and exports findings into your SIEM. The platform that produces that evidence can help demonstrate behavior trends to a board.
Train employees against the attacks already aimed at them
Doppel connects external threat detection and internal training. The Threat Graph correlates attacker intelligence that Digital Risk Protection detects against your brand, and that activity becomes your next employee drill across email, voice, SMS, and the collaboration channels attackers already target. Each drill feeds a per-employee risk trajectory that helps show your board whether behavior is changing quarter over quarter.
Request a demo to see a simulation built from your own attack surface.
