Phishing Simulation Industry Report 2026: Benchmarks, Threats and Trends
This is a synthesis report. It distills publicly-available 2025-2026 research from Verizon DBIR, IBM Cost of a Data Breach, Sophos State of Ransomware, FBI IC3, CrowdStrike, Mandiant M-Trends and CISA into industry benchmarks, attack-vector trends and program-design implications for security teams running phishing simulation in 2026. We do not publish original aggregate customer data in this report; if you cite figures, cite the underlying sources.
Executive summary
2026 is the year the phishing-simulation industry transitioned from "training program" to "evidence engine." Three forces converged:
- Compliance frameworks made testing explicit. PCI DSS 4.0 added continuous-testing language. NYDFS Part 500 added "including for phishing attacks" in 2023. CMMC 2.0 introduced third-party assessment of NIST 800-171 AT family controls. The frameworks are no longer satisfied by annual content delivery.
- Cyber insurance underwriting standardized phishing-program questions. Renewal applications in 2026 universally ask about continuous program existence, click-rate trends, auto-assigned remediation and reporting cadence. Programs without continuous testing face higher premiums.
- Attack tradecraft outran static defenses. AiTM kits commoditized. AI-generated lures eliminated bad-grammar tells. Multi-channel phishing (email + SMS + voice) bypassed email-gateway defenses entirely. Standard MFA (push, TOTP) became insufficient for AiTM-class attacks.
The cumulative effect is that phishing simulation programs in 2026 are doing two things at once: producing evidence the compliance and insurance side demand, and training the recognition behavior the threat-landscape side demands. Programs that produce one without the other increasingly fail in production.
Click-rate benchmarks by program maturity
Industry-wide click-rate ranges, synthesized from major SAT vendors' published benchmarks, Verizon DBIR social engineering data and academic research:
| Program maturity | Typical click rate range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1, no prior testing | 25-35% | Baseline susceptibility before any program intervention |
| Year 1, after 6-12 months | 12-20% | First measurable improvement window with monthly cadence |
| Year 2-3, mature program | 5-12% | Most programs plateau here without difficulty progression |
| 3+ years, advanced | <5% | Auto-assigned remediation + difficulty progression + multi-channel |
The 25-35% baseline figure has been remarkably stable across vendor publications and academic studies for years. The mature-program plateau has shifted slightly downward over the last 5 years as auto-assigned remediation has become standard, but the order-of-magnitude shape is the same. Industry-specific click-rate benchmarks covers vertical-level variations.
Click-rate variation by industry
Vertical-level click-rate ranges (synthesized; expect ±3% variation depending on report and methodology):
- Education (K-12 and higher ed) - typically the highest click rate (35-45% baseline; 8-15% mature). Fast user turnover, large student population, broad attack surface.
- Healthcare - high click rate (30-40% baseline; 7-13% mature). Tightly regulated but operationally complex; shift workers and clinical-system pressure increase susceptibility.
- Financial services - moderate click rate (20-30% baseline; 4-9% mature). Higher security awareness baseline; aggressive program investment.
- Manufacturing - moderate-high click rate (28-38% baseline; 8-14% mature). OT/IT cultural divide; plant-floor populations underserved by traditional training.
- Technology - lowest click rate (15-25% baseline; 3-7% mature). High security awareness baseline; technical workforce; aggressive testing programs.
- Government / Public sector - moderate click rate (25-35% baseline; 5-11% mature). Mandate-driven program adoption; budget-constrained execution.
Attack-vector trends 2025-2026
The shifts that matter for program design:
1. AiTM commoditization
Adversary-in-the-middle reverse-proxy phishing - where the attacker proxies the real authentication flow rather than collecting credentials at a fake login page - has commoditized via phishing-as-a-service operations. Mandiant M-Trends and CrowdStrike Global Threat Report both documented the shift through 2025. The implication: standard MFA (push approval, TOTP, SMS) no longer reliably stops credential theft because the attacker proxies the MFA challenge in real-time. Programs that previously relied on MFA as the post-click defense need to integrate phishing-resistant MFA (FIDO2/passkeys), OAuth consent restrictions, session-binding controls and continuous-simulation training that covers the AiTM attack pattern. MFA bypass phishing attacks covers the five attack patterns in detail.
2. AI-generated lure quality
LLM-generated phishing content eliminated the bad-grammar tells that historically distinguished mass phishing from targeted spear phishing. Click rates on LLM-generated lures are comparable to human-crafted spear phishing in academic studies. Program implication: harder lures need to be more standard than they were previously. Difficulty progression becomes more important to the training value. AI-generated phishing covers the defender-side response.
3. Multi-channel mainstreaming
Smishing (SMS phishing) and vishing (voice phishing) volumes increased materially through 2025-2026. The drivers: email gateways got better, mobile devices remained underserved and AI-generated voice cloning made vishing economically viable at scale. Programs that test only via email now have a known coverage gap. Smishing and deepfake vishing defense cover the threat patterns and countermeasures.
4. Collaboration-tool phishing
Slack, Microsoft Teams and similar collaboration platforms became material phishing vectors in 2025-2026. The dominant patterns: external-chat impersonation, Slack Connect cross-workspace abuse, malicious app installations, in-product file lures. Email gateways do not see this traffic. Collaboration-tool phishing covers the five attack patterns and program response.
5. Ransomware dwell-time compression
Sophos State of Ransomware and Mandiant data both showed dwell-time medians compressing through 2025 - sub-24-hour from initial click to encryption for several active families. The implication for phishing simulation: post-click defenses are too slow. Prevention has to land at click-stage. Ransomware phishing covers the full chain.
Compliance-driven adoption trends
Frameworks that explicitly elevated phishing-program expectations 2024-2026:
- PCI DSS 4.0 - moved past annual training; continuous-testing language explicit in Requirement 12.6.
- NYDFS Part 500 Second Amendment - added "including for phishing attacks" in Section 500.14(a)(3) (effective 2023-2024).
- NIS2 transposition - EU member states transposed NIS2 in 2024-2025; awareness training is explicit in Article 21.
- CMMC 2.0 - 32 CFR 170 finalized late 2024; DFARS 252.204-7021 finalized late 2025; phased contract incorporation 2025-2028. Third-party assessment of NIST 800-171 AT family.
- HITRUST CSF v11 - raised operational rigor expectations at Implemented and Measured tiers.
- FFIEC supplements - increasingly weight YOY trend analysis as maturity indicator; vishing addressed in recent supplements.
- SEC 8-K cybersecurity disclosure rule (effective Dec 2023) - material cybersecurity incidents must be disclosed; awareness program effectiveness becomes investor-relations consideration for public companies.
The compliance comparison hub covers the cross-framework evidence overlap in detail.
Cyber insurance underwriting trends
Cyber insurance applications in 2026 universally ask about phishing programs across all major writers in the cyber-insurance market. The standard application question set covers:
- Continuous phishing simulation program existence (yes/no)
- Frequency (annual / quarterly / monthly / weekly)
- Click-rate trend over the last 12 months
- Auto-assigned remediation training (yes/no)
- Scope (all employees / privileged only / contractors included)
- Reporting cadence to leadership
Organizations without a continuous program face higher premiums; mature programs see material premium reductions and broader sub-limit coverage. The cyber-insurer renewal walkthrough covers the question set in operational detail. Reducing premiums via phishing training covers the leverage angles.
What's changing in program design
Five 2026 program-design shifts driven by the trends above:
- Multi-channel becomes table stakes. Email-only programs have a known coverage gap that compliance frameworks and underwriters will start to surface as findings. Email + SMS + voice is the operational standard.
- Difficulty progression matters more. AI-generated lures collapse the easy/hard distinction at the content level. Program design needs explicit difficulty progression - easy lures train volume defense; hard lures train against the targeted attacks that cause most ransomware incidents.
- Auto-assigned remediation is required, not optional. Manual remediation is increasingly cited as insufficient evidence by insurers, examiners and assessors. Behavior-triggered just-in-time learning is the default expectation. Auto-assigned training covers the implementation pattern.
- YOY trend evidence is required. Annual snapshots are no longer enough. Quarterly trend reports across the assessment cycle are what examiners and underwriters look for. Programs that just-in-time-build evidence in the weeks before assessment are surfaced as findings.
- Phishing-resistant MFA gets bundled into the program. AiTM commoditization means standard MFA is no longer the post-click backstop. Programs that integrate FIDO2/passkey rollout with phishing simulation evidence (e.g., simulating AiTM patterns to show passkey-protected accounts behave correctly) produce stronger evidence packages.
Methodology note
The figures in this report are synthesized from publicly-available research. Specific sources cited or implicitly referenced:
- Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) - annual social engineering action data and breach incident counts
- IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report - average breach costs by attack vector
- Sophos State of Ransomware - dwell time, attack frequency, defense effectiveness
- FBI IC3 Internet Crime Complaint Center annual reports - BEC volume, total reported losses by category
- CrowdStrike Global Threat Report - adversary tradecraft trends
- Mandiant M-Trends - attack-chain dwell time, initial-access vector distribution
- CISA advisories and joint cybersecurity advisories - specific threat actor TTPs
- Major SAT vendors' published benchmarks (KnowBe4, Proofpoint, Cofense, Hoxhunt) - click-rate ranges by industry
- Academic research (peer-reviewed studies on phishing susceptibility, LLM-generated lure effectiveness)
If you reproduce or cite figures, cite the underlying source rather than this report.
Where Bait & Phish fits
Bait & Phish is a phishing simulation and security awareness training platform with 15+ years of operating history. The platform produces the operational evidence - campaign records, click-rate trend lines, training completion records, threshold-exceedance documentation - that the 2026 compliance and insurance environment expects. Start a 25-user free trial or talk to us about program design suited to your industry, framework and 2026 underwriting cycle.
This report is informational. Specific program-design, compliance, insurance and assessment decisions are organization-specific - consult appropriate counsel and advisors for tailored guidance.
See also: Phishing Trends 2026 - annual roundup for a focused threat-landscape narrative complement to this benchmarks-driven synthesis.