These Are the Top Employee Security Awareness Training Platforms

Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels

There are many security awareness training platforms on the market, making it difficult to distinguish between them. This article maps out the standout capabilities of each of the top five security awareness training solutions for increasing employee security.

What You Will Learn

• Employees today are bombarded by highly sophisticated phishing and social engineering attacks.
• Good security awareness training is engaging, customized, frequently updated, and sends tests when employees aren’t expecting them.
• Hoxhunt and SoSafe focus on driving behavioral change, Brightside covers the biggest range of phishing threats, Guardey is the easiest to roll out, and Proofpoint incorporates the most live threat intel.

Organizations invest massive amounts of resources into cybersecurity: strengthening their defenses, bolstering detection and remediation capabilities, and improving compliance to cybersecurity regulations. But employees remain the weakest link in even the best-defended enterprise, and phishing attacks pose a severe headache for every security team.

Everyone has moments of distraction, confusion, or uncertainty. A couple of seconds is all it takes for someone to click on a link that takes them to a fake site, or to download a convincing attachment that’s full of malware. Malicious attachments, links, and requests arrive in employee inboxes and phones throughout the day, dressed convincingly as genuine communications.

AI has raised the level of sophistication, as well as the volume of attacks that employees have to cope with every day, so that even the best phishing protection tool can’t stop every attack. The only solution is to make it an ingrained, unbreakable habit for employees to question the messages that appear before them, so that it’s second nature for them to suspect malicious activity.

This level of alertness requires continuous security awareness training that:

• Sends tests in the line of work when employees aren’t expecting them
• Reflects real world, current threats
• Runs engaging, bitesize training modules
• Updates content frequently to address changing attack patterns
• Customizes training to different roles, locations, departments, and compliance requirements
• Tracks and measures changes in employee behavior

There’s a huge number of security awareness training platforms on the market, and many of them check all of these boxes. You’ll probably find that several solutions meet all your company’s specific criteria, but you’re still struggling to tell them apart because they all seem to promise the same thing.

This article reviews five of the most highly recommended platforms, and explains what makes each one distinct from the other vendors in the space.

1.   Hoxhunt

Hoxhunt stands out for its commitment to changing employee behavior. It built a continuous, adaptive training loop around automated phishing simulations that are tailored to each user’s role, usage patterns, and department, adjusting the difficulty in response to user actions.

It’s also easy to roll out customized training, with a learning experience that’s more like a fitness program than security training.

Hoxhunt Key Capabilities:

• Adaptive, dynamic training experiences that drive employee engagement
• Gamification and engagement mechanics to ensure high completion rates
• Robust analytics that reveal your organization’s true security vigilance levels
• Seamless SOC integrations that bridge awareness and operations
• Global reach, with over 30 languages and 129 countries supported

2.   Proofpoint

Proofpoint attracts attention for its real-time threat intelligence integration. It draws live data about genuine attacks from across its email security network and feeds them into simulations, which ensures that the curriculum is hyper-realistic and relevant.

It’s worth noting that Proofpoint’s risk-based, personalized training levels are harder to unlock, requiring more setup and maturity, integration with the broader Proofpoint stack, and active program management.

Proofpoint Key Capabilities:

• Deep integration with email security, although this only applies if you’re using the Proofpoint ecosystem
• Role-based targeting and personalized training intensity according to jobs and data access
• Incorporates threat intelligence from its live attack data feeds
• Behavior tracking analytics that monitor employee reactions
• Powerful enterprise-level reporting with audit-ready reports and management dashboards

3.   SoSafe

SoSafe is notable for its behavioral science and culture-first design that incorporates strong human risk assessment into its scoring.

The solution approaches security awareness as a long-term behavior and culture change program, rather than focusing narrowly on increasing employee scores.

SoSafe Key Capabilities:

• Designed to build long-term security habits
• Localized content for global teams, adapted to multiple languages and cultures
• Gamified and engaging UX
• Diverse phishing simulations
• Strong human risk analytics that assign behavioral risk scores across the organization

4.   Guardey

Guardey stands out for its ultra-light microlearning format. It requires just three minutes of training per week through in-app challenges, making it easy to sustain engagement over time.

It’s very easy to set up and maintain, requiring minimal resources, effort, and administrative input.

Guardey Key Capabilities:

• Engaging UX that maintains user interest and drives completion
• Bitesize training sessions that motivate employees to train regularly
• Interactive training experiences
• Lightweight, simple rollout
• Continuous training with a weekly cadence for frequent reinforcement

5.   Brightside AI

Brightside AI is unique in offering true multi-channel AI attack simulation.

The training modules address vishing, email phishing, and deepfakes, covering all types of modern employee-targeted attacks.

Brightside Key Capabilities:

• Real-time phishing awareness training for email, voice messages, and deepfake videos
• Gamified, chat-based learning delivered through the conversational learning companion
• Personalized, role-based scenarios using OSINT
• Self-service awareness training
• Automated training delivery that eases the burden on administrative staff

Overview: Differentiating the Best Security Awareness Training Platforms

The best platform depends on the size of your organization, your resources, and the complexity of your security environment. That said, this table shows at a glance the differences between each of the top security awareness training solutions.

FAQs

• What is the difference between compliance-based and behavior-based security awareness training?

Compliance-based security awareness training can turn into a box-checking exercise that focuses too narrowly on employee scores. Behavior-based security awareness training is considered the gold standard, because it monitors how employees respond to real-world threats and ensures that they spot, report and resist phishing and social engineering attacks.

• Which security awareness training platform is best for driving real employee behavior change?

Hoxhunt was designed with behavioral change in mind. SoSafe was built using behavioral science to achieve cultural change. Proofpoint can measure behavioral change, but it requires more resources and greater security maturity to use it in this way.

• Do all security awareness platforms use phishing simulations in the same way?

No. Some security awareness platforms send phishing simulations as a targeted follow-up when employees fail a routine training exercise, while others use them more widely. Hoxhunt, for example, sends simulated phishing messages through the employees’ regular email or SMS networks at irregular and unexpected times, to test real behavior change.

• How important is gamification in keeping employees engaged in security training?

Gamification is seen as extremely important at maintaining employee engagement with security awareness training. Employees are more likely to complete training experiences that incorporate challenges, competitive leaderboards, fun material, and enjoyable training videos, and they are also more likely to remember the information they learned.

• What makes AI-driven attack simulation different from traditional phishing training?

AI-driven attack simulation goes beyond static phishing templates by dynamically generating realistic, context-aware scenarios that evolve based on user behavior. Instead of sending the same predefined emails to everyone, AI can tailor attacks to individual roles, communication patterns, and emerging threat tactics. This improves engagement and provides deeper insight into how employees actually respond to real-world threats.