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Train employees to pause before acting on consequential messages, verify unusual requests through a trusted channel they find independently, and report suspicious interactions promptly. The goal is not to guess whether a message was written by AI: it is to make safe decisions even when a phishing attempt looks polished and persuasive.
What employees should learn to recognize
AI can help make phishing messages more convincing, but polished writing does not prove a message is legitimate. NIST advises taking a second or third look at any message requesting action. Its phishing guidance, created for small businesses and updated August 19, 2025, identifies urgency, requests for sensitive information, and suspicious sender addresses as warning signs. Those clues are useful, but employees should assess the request and its context rather than rely on a single tell.
Make the requested action the center of the decision. A message deserves extra scrutiny if it asks someone to:
- Click a link or download an attachment.
- Log in or provide credentials.
- Transfer funds, change payment details, or act on an urgent financial request.
- Share sensitive or confidential information.
These are reasons to pause and verify—not proof that a message is malicious or AI-generated. NIST also notes that phishing can arrive through email, text, and social media, including messages impersonating familiar organizations or leaders. NIST phishing guidance
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Teach a repeatable pause-and-verify routine
Give employees one procedure they can apply across channels. NIST recommends directly verifying urgent requests from leaders or vendors. Verification should use contact details already held in an established directory or another trusted channel—not a phone number, link, or reply address supplied in the suspicious message.
- Pause. Do not click, download, pay, log in, or disclose information while assessing an unexpected or urgent request.
- Check the context. Does the request fit the person’s role, the usual process, and the conversation so far? Is it asking to bypass a normal approval or move the conversation to another channel?
- Verify independently. Contact the purported sender using a known phone number, established internal directory, or other trusted channel. Do not use the suspicious message’s contact details to confirm it.
- Report it. Use the organization’s designated reporting control or channel if the message seems suspicious, even if the employee has already interacted with it.
For example, if a supposed executive asks for an urgent transfer, the employee should follow the organization’s financial approval process and confirm the request through independently sourced contact information. CISA likewise recommends direct verification of urgent requests and clear policies for reporting and official communications. Its August 29, 2025 guidance is specifically directed to state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, while the verification behavior is broadly useful. CISA: Four Cybersecurity Essentials for SLTTs
Practice scenarios across channels
Use scenarios that reflect the organization’s work and the decisions employees actually make. Do not teach a checklist of supposedly AI-specific wording or treat any scenario as proof that every example is AI-generated.
- An executive asks for a confidential payment or urgent funds transfer.
- A vendor sends revised payment details or presses for an exception to the usual process.
- A shared-file notification asks the employee to sign in through a link.
- A message impersonating a familiar organization asks for sensitive information.
- A conversation begins in email and then moves to text or voice with a new urgent request.
Include email, text, and social-media examples where they are relevant to the organization. Make the exercise teach the pause, independent verification, and reporting path—not simply whether someone can spot a suspicious-looking message.
Show employees how to report and what to do after a mistake
Recognition training is incomplete if staff do not know how to report a suspicious message. Demonstrate the organization’s actual reporting control or channel, then let employees rehearse using it. The reporting path should be easy to find and consistent with the organization’s official communication policies.
Tell employees to report promptly even if they clicked a link, opened a file, replied, or submitted credentials. Reporting remains useful after an interaction because it gives the organization a chance to respond. Do not improvise technical recovery instructions in general training: tell staff to follow the organization’s incident-response procedures and the directions of its designated security or IT team. CISA recommends policies that explain phishing reporting and the use of official communication channels. CISA: Four Cybersecurity Essentials for SLTTs; NIST phishing guidance
Run realistic simulations and interpret results in context
Simulations can help employees practice, but a raw click rate cannot tell the whole story. CISA recommends using phishing simulations that mimic threats an organization might face. NIST’s Phish Scale provides a method for rating how difficult a simulated email is to detect, helping program owners compare results with the scenario’s difficulty rather than treating every exercise as equally easy.
Design each exercise to evaluate useful behavior: whether staff pause, follow verification procedures, and report the message. Give participants a clear learning response and a route to report concerns. Use results to identify where instructions or processes need improvement, not simply to label individuals as careless. NIST TN 2276, published November 15, 2023, explains the Phish Scale method. NIST Phish Scale User Guide
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Tailor training by role and maintain it over time
Everyone needs the same basic verification and reporting habits, but the examples and depth should reflect each role’s responsibilities. Staff who handle payments, sensitive data, executive communications, or security operations may need practice centered on the decisions they are authorized to make and the procedures they must follow. Specialized security or AI roles need training appropriate to their duties; a general-awareness exercise is not a substitute for that role-specific preparation.
Treat awareness as an ongoing learning program rather than a one-time presentation. NIST SP 800-50 Rev. 1, finalized in September 2024, covers program lifecycle, behavior change, evaluation, and suggested metrics. It can help organizations plan, deliver, assess, and refresh learning. NIST’s initial preliminary draft AI Profile, dated December 2025, specifically calls out AI-enabled spear phishing and social engineering and says training should evolve as AI technology changes. It is draft guidance, not a finalized standard. NIST SP 800-50 Rev. 1; NIST AI Profile, Initial Preliminary Draft
When reviewing a training program, check whether its scenarios reflect organizational risks, its content fits employees’ roles, reporting is easy to find, simulation difficulty is considered, learning is evaluated over time, and materials are refreshed as threats and processes change. NIST SP 1308 is an additional workforce and risk-management quick-start guide for adapting workforce decisions as threats and technologies evolve. NIST SP 1308
Optional course resource
CISA’s NICCS catalog lists Fundamentals of AI-Enhanced Phishing and Ransomware, an online self-paced course last published February 27, 2025. Its listing describes objectives that include understanding AI-driven phishing and ransomware tactics and developing mitigation strategies. Treat the catalog entry as a resource to evaluate; the listing does not guarantee current enrollment availability or replace your organization’s reporting procedures and practice. NICCS catalog record
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