Corporate phishing campaigns are controlled initiatives, usually conducted periodically by the IT team or the Blue Team, with the goal of simulating attacks against an organization’s employees. These campaigns aim to assess user behavior when faced with malicious emails, measure awareness levels, and generate metrics such as click-through rates, credential submission, and suspicious message reporting.
In theory, this model contributes to risk reduction and increased security maturity. In practice, however, many of these initiatives fail to produce real gains. The issue is not phishing itself, but how it is planned, executed, and interpreted.
Main problems with corporate phishing campaigns
One of the primary points of failure lies in predictable and unrealistic simulations. Many campaigns rely on generic templates, often provided by the phishing tool itself or sourced from public repositories, along with suspicious domains, obvious language errors, and repetitive scenarios over time.
As a result, users do not learn how to identify real threats, but rather how to recognize the “internal campaign phishing.” This creates a false sense of learning, continuous improvement, and KPI evolution (Key Performance Indicators), which does not hold up against a real adversary.
Another critical issue is the lack of alignment between these campaigns and real threats. Phishing simulations often fail to incorporate TTPs (Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures) used by active adversaries, nor do they leverage contextualized social engineering based on public data, supply chain information, or the organization’s operational context. As a consequence, the environment appears prepared but fails completely when exposed to a real attacker operating in a strategic and adaptive manner.
How Red Team can help
This is where the Red Team redefines the role of corporate phishing campaigns. Instead of generic simulations, the approach shifts to highly contextualized scenarios built from public data, supply chain information, and real operational contexts of the organization. This same approach can be applied both to awareness initiatives and to more advanced exercises aimed at simulating real environment compromise.
In awareness-focused actions, a common example involves the supply chain. Based on public information such as suppliers listed on the corporate website, partnership announcements, open job postings, or employee profiles on social networks, it is possible to identify real organizational relationships.
From there, the Red Team builds a phishing scenario simulating legitimate communication from a recurring supplier, tied to a real operational process, such as contract updates, invoice submission, scope adjustments, or changes to banking details. For the user, the message makes sense. For security controls, the challenge is real.
In exercises focused on compromise, phishing ceases to be merely an educational tool and becomes the initial access vector. In these scenarios, the Red Team employs TTPs used by Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups, infrastructure similar to that of real adversaries, well-crafted domains and identities, as well as customized payloads and defense evasion techniques. This approach exposes weaknesses that traditional campaigns would hardly reveal and highlights the real impact of a phishing attack on the organization.
More importantly, this approach enables the evaluation of the entire defensive ecosystem. The question shifts from who clicked to whether the email was detected, whether the endpoint generated an alert, whether the SOC responded, whether access was contained, and how long it took. People, processes, and technology are evaluated in an integrated manner, generating real and actionable learning.
How our phishing solution can help
When conducted by a specialized technical team, phishing actions result in concrete adjustments to technical controls, improved detection capabilities, contextual training for users, and clear feedback for Blue Team and SOC teams. The objective is never to expose individuals, but to strengthen the organization against real attacks.
Phishing campaigns do not fail because users click. They fail when they are predictable, produce empty metrics, do not reflect real threats, and ignore response capabilities. Red Team transforms phishing from a compliance exercise into a real test of organizational maturity.
At iT.eam, we apply this approach in phishing campaigns and Red Team exercises for organizations seeking to evolve their security maturity, going beyond superficial metrics and compliance-driven exercises. Our hands-on experience shows that well-executed phishing campaigns help identify real weaknesses, validate the effectiveness of implemented controls, and strengthen detection and response capabilities against attacks that reflect the real threat landscape.
By working with iT.eam, your organization strengthens its security posture and advances the maturity of phishing campaigns beyond basic awareness. Talk to one of our specialists and schedule a conversation to learn how our phishing and Red Team campaigns can support your objectives!
