Cofense measures employee readiness against real-world phishing threats

Cofense has announced an expansion of its AI-driven Phishing Defense Platform through Cofense Command Center, its orchestration layer for measurement and reporting. The new Competency Dashboard measures how employees recognize, report and respond to phishing threats, giving security teams evidence of program effectiveness rather than training completion.

This measurement advances Secure Behavior Management (SBM), an approach that builds competency, tracks behavior, and shows progress across a phishing defense program. The Competency Dashboard, available now, drives improved outcomes by measuring organizations’ response to threats at the individual and company level. Phishing Remediation data from Cofense Triage and Vision, where AI already classifies employee-reported threats at scale, will connect to Command Center in Q4 2026, providing real-world threat signals alongside training and behavior data.

Security awareness programs have traditionally measured activity: who completed training, clicked a simulated phish, or passed a quiz. Those measures do not show whether employees make better security decisions when it counts.

Gartner states the “security awareness computer-based training” market, or SACBT, has come a long way and evolved significantly for the better over the last few years. Thankfully, the associated technologies are far more capable of supporting the objective of motivating employees to adopt more secure behaviors to reduce foreseeable and avoidable cybersecurity incidents. However, the market name adopted in recent years, “human risk management” (HRM), is, to be blunt, counterproductive to that mission.

“SBM speaks directly to the CISO’s goal of fostering more secure work behaviors and a more security-conscious corporate culture to reduce employee-initiated risks.” (Gartner, “Analyst Take: Why It’s Time to Drop ‘Human Risk Management’ as a Market Name,” Richard Addiscott, 30 April 2026. Gartner is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.)

“Readiness is not uniform. A workforce can be strong against credential phishing and still fall for invoice fraud, and a single score hides that,” said Rachel Roldan, VP of Product at Cofense. “The Competency Dashboard shows where an organization is genuinely capable and where it is exposed, so teams can put reinforcement where it changes outcomes. Our AI already classifies reported threats at scale, and connecting data to competency measurement is what Secure Behavior Management requires.”

Cofense Command Center brings training and behavior measurement into one view. The expansion includes three advances:

• Competency Dashboard assesses whether employees recognize suspicious activity, report it quickly, and respond appropriately, giving security teams a clearer view of program coverage and readiness.
• Phishing Remediation data from Triage and Vision, connecting to Command Center later this year, brings explainable AI-driven classification and automation into the same view as training and behavior signals.
• Unified reporting across training, behavior, threat, and remediation signals helps organizations evaluate readiness and communicate program impact.

“Boards are asking Chief Information Security Officers for proof, not activity reports,” said Marc Olesen, Chief Executive Officer of Cofense. “Most security programs can tell you how many people completed training. Very few can tell you whether the organization would recognize the next attack. Closing that gap with AI-driven phishing defense is what we built Cofense to do.”