Does Security Awareness Training Reduce Security Incidents?

Every organization that invests in employee cybersecurity training eventually asks the same practical question: does it actually work? Will teaching people to recognize phishing, question urgent requests, and handle data carefully reduce the likelihood of a costly security incident, or is training just a box to check for compliance? The honest answer, backed by research, is more nuanced than either the most enthusiastic training vendor or the most skeptical executive would suggest. Training cannot eliminate security incidents, and no credible study claims it prevents all breaches. But a substantial body of evidence shows that informed, regularly reinforced employees are measurably harder to trick, more likely to report problems early, and a genuine layer of defense. Here is what the research actually shows.

The human element is the front door

Before asking whether training works, it helps to understand the size of the problem it addresses. In its 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, Verizon found that 68% of breaches involved a non-malicious human element: someone falling for social engineering, making an error, or misusing access. Verizon has reported a version of this finding year after year, and the conclusion is consistent: people, not exotic malware, are how attackers most often get in.

IBM reaches a similar conclusion from a different angle. Its Cost of a Data Breach report identified phishing as the single most common initial attack vector in its 2025 edition, involved in about 16% of the breaches studied. And the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise (a fraud that relies almost entirely on tricking a person rather than breaching a system) cost organizations roughly $2.77 billion in 2024 alone. The pattern is unmistakable: attackers overwhelmingly start with people.

What the numbers show about training

For a clear view of how training changes behavior, the most widely cited data comes from security awareness vendors. KnowBe4's Phishing by Industry Benchmarking Report, which aggregates results from millions of simulated phishing tests, reports that before training, about one in three employees (roughly 33%) clicks a simulated phishing email. After 90 days of combined training and testing, that figure drops to about 20%. After a full year of recurring training, it falls to roughly 4%, a reduction of about 86% in phishing susceptibility.

These are real, large, and encouraging numbers, and they are worth reading carefully. They come from a training vendor, they measure clicks on simulated emails rather than confirmed real-world breaches, and they reflect organizations that maintain a recurring program, not a single annual session.

Independent, peer-reviewed research tells a more measured story. A 2024 scoping review published in the journal Computers & Security, "Exploring the evidence for email phishing training", found that training reliably improves people's ability to recognize phishing, but that current methods still leave roughly 23% of users susceptible and that most studies do not measure how long the effect lasts. A 2025 study from researchers at UC San Diego went further, finding that embedded phishing training (the kind delivered in the moment someone clicks) reduced the likelihood of clicking a phishing link by only about 2% in their sample.

The takeaway is not that training is worthless. It is that the effect is real but modest, and it depends heavily on how the training is delivered and reinforced. That distinction matters when someone promises a single course will fix the human problem.

Why employees are targeted first

Attackers go after people because people are the path of least resistance. It is almost always cheaper and faster to trick someone into handing over a password than to break a well-configured system. The most common human-targeted attacks include:

• Phishing and social engineering: fraudulent messages designed to steal credentials or install malware.
• Business email compromise: impersonating an executive or vendor to authorize a fraudulent payment.
• Credential theft: reusing or guessing passwords, or approving a login the victim did not initiate.
• Malicious links and attachments: the classic first step in a ransomware attack.
• Accidental data exposure: sending information to the wrong person or pasting it into an unapproved tool.

Each of these exploits a normal human tendency (trust, urgency, helpfulness, or simple inattention) rather than a technical flaw. This is why government guidance treats awareness as a core control. CISA urges employers to train workers to spot and report phishing, and NIST's guidance on security awareness, training, and education describes its primary purpose plainly: to reduce errors and omissions.

What changes after employees are trained

Training does not turn ordinary employees into security analysts, and it does not need to. Its value comes from a small set of durable behavior changes. Trained employees are more likely to:

• Pause before acting on an unexpected or urgent request.
• Recognize the warning signs of a phishing email.
• Verify payment and credential requests through a second channel.
• Use and protect strong authentication.
• Report suspicious activity instead of ignoring it.

Reporting, in particular, is one of the most valuable outcomes of a good program. An employee who flags a suspicious message gives the organization early warning, often before an attack can do damage. CISA's guidance emphasizes exactly this: teaching employees how to spot a phish and, just as important, how to report one, including when they think they may have already fallen for it.

Training versus no training

Direct, independent comparisons of trained and untrained employees are harder to find than most marketing materials suggest, and that gap is itself a caution against overclaiming. What the evidence does support is directional. Organizations that run recurring training with realistic simulations consistently see phishing click rates decline over time, while organizations that do nothing see their susceptibility stay flat. The vendor benchmark data illustrates the difference: the gap between a 33% baseline and a 4% rate after a year of reinforcement is the gap between a program that is maintained and one that is not.

Because most studies measure simulation clicks rather than confirmed breaches, the honest statement is that training measurably reduces susceptibility to phishing (and likely reduces the human-error incidents that follow from it) rather than that training prevents breaches outright. Anyone who tells you otherwise is overstating the science.

The cost of one preventable incident

The reason this question matters is that a single incident can be expensive in ways that are easy to underestimate. IBM's 2024 report put the global average cost of a data breach at $4.88 million, a 10% increase over the prior year and the highest figure on record. That average is weighted toward large enterprises, but the components apply to organizations of every size: incident response and recovery, business interruption, regulatory fines, legal costs, and lost customer trust.

Business email compromise losses, which run in the billions annually, show that the most damaging attacks often require no technical sophistication at all, just a convincing email and an employee who acts on it. Cyber insurers have internalized this lesson. Many now ask about documented security awareness training at renewal, because they treat an untrained workforce as a measurable increase in risk, not a theoretical one.

Why one annual video is not enough

A recurring theme in the research is that the format and frequency of training matter as much as whether training happens at all. A single, once-a-year video checks a compliance box but produces little durable behavior change. The programs that show the strongest results combine short, practical content with realistic phishing simulations, knowledge checks, and reinforcement throughout the year. The benchmark data makes this visible: the biggest improvements come not in the first 90 days but over a full year of repeated exposure.

This is why most frameworks require training at least annually, and why mature programs treat awareness as continuous rather than a one-time event. The goal is not a certificate once a year; it is a workforce that keeps the habits sharp, month after month.

What effective training should actually cover

A practical program should cover the threats employees actually face, in plain language. The core topics are consistent across frameworks and industries:

• Phishing and social engineering
• Strong passwords and multi-factor authentication
• Payment and invoice fraud
• Safe browsing and device security
• Data privacy and handling
• Remote-work security
• How and when to report an incident

The content should be role-appropriate. The finance team that approves payments needs specific guidance on business email compromise and verification, while every employee needs to understand phishing and reporting. Generic, one-size-fits-all training is better than nothing, but targeted guidance closes the gaps that cause the most expensive losses.

What employers should track

A training program is only as good as the organization's ability to prove it happened and to see whether it is working. Employers should track completion records, assessment and knowledge-check scores, certificates of completion, phishing simulation click and reporting rates over time, and the recurrence of training.

These records serve two purposes at once. They satisfy auditors, regulators, and insurers who ask for proof of training, and they give the organization a way to measure whether the program is actually reducing human risk. A completion rate of 98% is reassuring, but a declining phishing click rate over the course of a year is the more meaningful number.

Conclusion

Employee training cannot eliminate every cybersecurity incident, and any claim that it can should be treated with skepticism. What the research consistently demonstrates is that informed employees are measurably harder to trick, more likely to report problems early, and an important layer in an organization's defense.

Simple Training Center helps organizations deliver practical employee training, track completion, assess knowledge, and maintain training records from one platform, so the evidence of a safer, better-prepared workforce is always available when you need it. Whether you are satisfying a compliance requirement, answering an insurer's questions, or simply reducing the odds of a costly mistake, the research points in one direction: an informed workforce is worth the investment. Explore Simple Training Center to see how practical, documented training fits into your organization.

Frequently asked questions

Does security awareness training actually reduce phishing clicks?

Yes, though the size of the effect varies by study. Vendor benchmarking data shows phishing click rates falling from about 33% at baseline to roughly 4% after a year of recurring training. Peer-reviewed research finds smaller effects on real-world behavior. Training reliably improves people's ability to recognize phishing, but durable reduction depends on regular reinforcement rather than a single annual session.

What percentage of data breaches involve human error?

Estimates vary by source and method. Verizon's 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report found 68% of breaches involved a non-malicious human element, while a widely cited 2020 Stanford and Tessian study put human error in 88% of breaches. IBM reports phishing is the most common initial attack vector. The consistent finding is that people are the most common entry point.

How often should employees receive cybersecurity training?

Most frameworks, including HIPAA, PCI DSS, and the FTC Safeguards Rule, require training at least annually, with onboarding for new hires. Evidence suggests a single yearly session is insufficient. Short, recurring reinforcement throughout the year, combined with realistic phishing simulations and knowledge checks, produces more durable behavior change than a one-time video.

Can training alone prevent a data breach?

No. Training reduces human risk but cannot eliminate it, and it does not address technical weaknesses such as unpatched software or missing multi-factor authentication. Effective programs pair awareness with controls like multi-factor authentication, least-privilege access, and tested backups. Training is one important layer of defense, not a complete solution.

Is security awareness training worth it for a small business?

For most small and mid-size organizations, yes. Training is among the least expensive security controls and is often required for compliance and cyber insurance. Because human error drives many breaches, a documented program can reduce risk, satisfy auditors and insurers, and produce records that demonstrate due diligence after an incident.