free phishing awareness training

Budget constraints are real. Whether you’re a startup founder, a small business owner, or an IT manager at a company that hasn’t yet prioritized security training investment, you need options that don’t require five-figure commitments.

Good news: legitimate free security awareness training exists. It won’t match enterprise platforms with dedicated customer success teams and unlimited customization, but it can meaningfully improve your organization’s security posture.

This guide separates genuinely useful free resources from marketing traps, explains what free options can and can’t do, and helps you decide when free is enough and when it isn’t.

Before looking at specific resources, understand the business models behind free offerings.

Freemium models give you a limited free tier designed to demonstrate value and convert you to a paid plan. These often restrict user counts, features, or content access. You’re the product demo.

Government and nonprofit resources are genuinely free educational content funded by taxpayers or organizational missions. Quality varies, but there’s no sales funnel waiting at the end.

Marketing-driven content is free on the surface but designed primarily to capture leads. The training tends to be superficial, with the real substance locked behind paywalls.

Open source projects are community-developed resources available without cost. They often require technical expertise to deploy. If you’re interested in that route, check our guide to open source LMS platforms for security training.

Each model has implications for what you’ll actually receive and what strings come attached.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: we offer a free interactive exercise library and you’re reading our blog.

Here’s the honest breakdown. The free library includes interactive 3D phishing simulations, social engineering awareness scenarios, basic security fundamentals exercises, and no registration required to try any of it.

What’s not included: the full course library (premium only), SCORM packages for LMS integration, analytics and completion tracking, custom branding, and dedicated support.

Why we do this: we believe people should experience quality security training before buying. Our free exercises demonstrate what’s possible with interactive simulations versus passive video content. Some organizations will never need more than free resources. Others will see the difference and choose to invest in comprehensive solutions.

No guilt trips. No aggressive sales follow-up. Just quality free resources.

Several government agencies and nonprofits provide legitimate free security awareness resources.

The U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency offers free training courses covering security fundamentals, phishing awareness materials for organizational use, industry-specific guidance for critical infrastructure sectors, and tabletop exercise packages for incident response practice.

CISA is best for organizations seeking credible, vendor-neutral content backed by government expertise. The limitation? Content can be dry and government-focused. No interactive simulations. No engagement features. Employees will complete it because they have to, not because they want to.

SANS, known for technical security training, offers free security awareness resources for community use, poster and newsletter templates, and basic training modules on common threats.

Best for organizations with technical audiences who respect the SANS brand. The free tier is limited though. Premium content requires significant investment.

StaySafeOnline.org provides consumer-focused security guidance, small business security resources, and annual awareness campaign materials for Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Best for small organizations seeking basic, accessible content. The big gap: it’s consumer-oriented and may not address enterprise concerns like business email compromise, targeted whaling attacks, or vishing.

The table tells the story clearly. Free resources cover the basics. Paid platforms cover everything else.

Free security awareness training may be sufficient in a few specific scenarios.

Your organization is small, under 25 employees. Administrative overhead of enterprise platforms isn’t justified at that size. You can personally follow up on training completion. Individual attention compensates for platform limitations.

You’re establishing baseline awareness. Your employees have never received any security training. Literally anything is better than the current state (which is nothing). You’re building the case for future investment and need data to show leadership.

You have technical capability. Your IT staff can deploy open source solutions. You can build custom training using free content. Integration with existing systems isn’t a requirement right now.

Compliance isn’t driving requirements. You’re not subject to regulations mandating specific training documentation. Audit records aren’t a primary concern. “We did training” is sufficient for your stakeholders.

Consider paid solutions when scale matters. Training hundreds or thousands of employees across multiple locations or a distributed workforce makes manual tracking a nightmare. The administrative burden alone justifies platform costs.

When compliance requires documentation, you need paid. Regulations mandate training records. Auditors expect completion reports. Liability concerns require provable training delivery. Free tools don’t generate the paper trail you need for compliance.

When phishing simulation is part of the plan, free falls short fast. You need to measure actual employee vulnerability. Continuous testing is required for improvement. Simulated attacks must appear legitimate, not like obvious tests.

When behavior change is the actual goal, passive awareness doesn’t translate to action. You need engagement features like gamification and competitions. Interactive scenarios build skills that reading PDFs never will. That’s the difference between training that works and training that checks a box.

When integration is required, training must connect to your existing LMS, single sign-on is necessary for adoption, and reporting must feed into security dashboards. Free tools almost never support this.

If free resources fit your current needs, here’s how to squeeze the most out of them.

Don’t just share random links. Build a coherent curriculum. Start with foundation material on basic security principles everyone needs. Move to threat-specific content on phishing, social engineering, and password security. Add role-specific training for high-risk positions. Then establish ongoing reinforcement and updates.

Generic free content becomes more relevant with organizational context. Add examples using your company’s actual systems and processes. Include your specific policies and procedures. Reference recent industry incidents affecting similar organizations. Feature real (anonymized) near-misses from your own organization. Those real stories land harder than any generic training module ever will.

Even without platform analytics, measure something. Training completion (even if manually tracked in a spreadsheet), quiz scores if resources include assessments, incident rates before and after training, and employee feedback on comprehension. Bad data beats no data when you’re building the case for future investment.

Annual training isn’t enough. Research on training effectiveness is clear on this point. Create ongoing touchpoints: monthly security tips via email or Slack, quarterly focused training on specific threats, real-time alerts when relevant threats emerge, and regular reminders of reporting procedures.

Phishing simulation is the most impactful training component. It’s also the hardest to get for free.

A legitimate open source phishing simulation platform. It’s fully featured with no per-user licensing costs and you get complete control over data.

The tradeoffs: it requires technical expertise to deploy, support is limited to community forums, you’re responsible for email deliverability (which is its own headache), and there’s no pre-built training content. When someone clicks a simulated phishing link, Gophish tells you they clicked. What happens next, the actual training moment, is up to you.

Best for organizations with technical staff willing to invest setup time.

Several vendors offer restricted free access with limited user counts (often 25 to 50 users), limited simulation frequency, basic reporting only, and expected sales follow-up. These work for evaluating platforms before purchase or for very small organizations. Just know you’re in a sales pipeline.

If free resources are a stepping stone to proper investment, gather evidence strategically.

Quantify current risk by documenting phishing emails that reached employees, noting security incidents involving human error, researching breach costs in your industry, and calculating potential liability exposure.

Demonstrate free tier limitations by showing tracking gaps that prevent compliance documentation, identifying engagement issues with passive content, documenting administrative time spent on manual processes, and noting security gaps free resources don’t address (like smishing, vishing, or barrel phishing).

Compare training costs against the average breach cost in your industry ($4.88 million globally, per IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report), incident response and recovery costs, regulatory fine exposure, and reputation damage potential. Even modest training investments show favorable ROI against these risks.

When you’re ready to upgrade, preserve what worked. Note which free content resonated with employees. Keep reinforcement cadences that proved effective. Maintain cultural elements that drove engagement.

Address the gaps you documented. Prioritize features that free resources lacked. Focus on measurable improvements to existing weaknesses. Make sure the new platform solves actual problems, not theoretical ones.

Plan for adoption. Communicate the change to employees. Allow a learning curve with the new platform. Compare metrics before and after transition. Evaluate the alternatives carefully rather than going with the first vendor who demos well.

Free security awareness training is a legitimate starting point. Government resources, nonprofit content, and vendor free tiers can meaningfully improve security posture when budgets are constrained.

But free has limits. It lacks the engagement features, simulation capabilities, analytics, and support that drive sustained behavior change at scale.

The question isn’t “free or paid?” It’s “free for now, or paid now?”

Start with quality free resources. Measure what you can. Build the case for investment. When you’re ready, transition to solutions that match your organizational maturity.

Experience the difference between passive and interactive security training. Try our free exercise library. No registration, no credit card, no sales pitch. Just quality training you can start today.