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Some may wonder why CYBERDISE Awareness provides a free solution for phishing simulations and cybersecurity training at the highest level. Anyone who thinks this is purely for marketing purposes is completely wrong.
I need to give a bit of background so you can understand our motivation for offering a free phishing tool. It’s about effectiveness, the market, and our own standards – and yes, also about marketing 😉
Let’s start with effectiveness: It is now scientifically proven what measures are needed to effectively reduce risk behavior in cyberspace so that they work properly and sustainably [1] [2]. However, most of today’s products frequently do not allow for the implementation of “proper cybersecurity awareness.” To achieve lasting behavioral change, the following are required:
With the exception of AI support [4], our free phishing solution enables the use of all the effectiveness factors mentioned above. CYBERDISE Free Phishing Simulation Edition enables effective awareness – simply and at no cost.
The market needs such a free tool. There are a large number of smaller organizations where dedicated information security officers or security engineers want to independently and autonomously carry out their own awareness measures – whether phishing simulations or information security training via e-learning including exams. There are also many cybersecurity managers who want to design and run their own awareness measures and phishing simulations without having to work with an external service provider right away.
Organizations also shy away, for various reasons, from using open-source frameworks such as GoPhish (a free, phishing-only tool). However, they have significantly fewer reservations about spending a little money or effort to set up a VPS and install a Docker image like Cyberdise Freemium Awareness on it. Such an installation, by the way, takes less than 15 minutes.
Professional standards – A central reason why we offer a free phishing and training solution is our own professional standards. We see ourselves as awareness professionals. We are constantly learning and we know how cybersecurity awareness works. Yet we see so many other providers on the market offering products and services that, based on our experience and scientific findings, simply don’t deliver results. Phishing campaigns with generic URLs or courses that aren’t personalized are just two examples of fundamental misconceptions in employee awareness and the fight for better user risk behavior. In our view, anyone doing things this way isn’t doing it quite right. And that is precisely where our standard comes in: we want to enable even smaller organizations to run truly effective and professionally designed awareness campaigns.
That is why marketing is not the primary purpose of the Free Phishing Simulation Edition – it is a side effect. Of course we’re happy if someone has a good experience with CYBERDISE Freemium and later acquires a commercial license. But that is not the purpose of our free phishing solution, and the tool is not designed for that. It is designed so that you can create real, genuine, and sophisticated awareness campaigns without paying anything, and thereby improve the risk behavior of your colleagues. These free phishing and training campaigns support up to a few hundred users; beyond that, a paid plan is required – or you can remove your campaigns from the tool, download and install a fresh Freemium Edition, which again takes no more than fifteen minutes.
The free phishing and training tool can be downloaded: https://cyberdise-awareness.com/freemium-edition/
YouTube installation videos are available here: https://youtu.be/qEIVXS2YCA4?si=BxF9aqhALCWpBmkS
And how to create your first campaign can be seen here: https://youtu.be/Kz1SRlPl8F0?si=oU4NeiNvIAqvE39j
#humanauthored
References:
[3] (focusing on observable behavior change, not attitude)
[4] We are planning to add the “Phishing Exercise Prompt Engineering” feature to the free phishing solution by mid-2026
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