Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

You often hear companies touting that they are AI enabled. But most do not give you the results of how that new AI stacks up with their previous non-AI offerings. We have some early data and want to share it. KnowBe4 was the first Human Risk Management (HRM) vendor to use AI. While our competitors have been touting the use of AI only since 2023 at the earliest, we have been using machine learning (ML), the backbone workhorse of AI, since early 2016 – for a decade!

By Roger A. Grimes and Matthew Duren AI agents can deliver incredible productivity gains, but their operational complexity makes effective threat modeling harder than ever, including for developers, administrators and especially end users. At the same time, both developers and non-developers are increasingly vibe-coding, or using AI to generate functional software from natural language prompts.

A new commodity phishing kit called “Venom Stealer” allows threat actors to automate ClickFix attacks, according to researchers at BlackFog. ClickFix is a social engineering technique that tricks users into executing malicious commands on their computer, usually resulting in malware installation.

The human layer is not impacted by Anthropic's Mythos Preview announcement. If anything, it is reinforced, and for reasons that deserve to be spelled out clearly.

Public sector cybersecurity leaders are no longer measured solely on whether they stop attacks, they are measured on whether they can prove it. Across federal, state, local and education environments, compliance obligations continue to expand. Frameworks and mandates include: These are not annual checkbox exercises. They require auditable, continuous evidence of control effectiveness, and for already stretched teams, this creates a second job: compliance documentation.

A criminal threat actor called “Silver Fox” is launching tax-themed phishing attacks against Japanese companies during the country’s tax season, according to researchers at ESET. “The ongoing campaign uses convincing phishing lures related to tax compliance violations, salary adjustments, job position changes, and employee stock ownership plans,” ESET says. “All emails share the same goal – trick the recipients into opening malicious links or attachments.

Threat actors are impersonating Palo Alto Networks recruiters to target job seekers, according to researchers with Palo Alto’s Unit 42 security team. “These attacks specifically target senior-level professionals by leveraging scraped LinkedIn data to craft highly personalized lures,” the researchers write.

AI is making phishing attacks easier to create and scale. Tasks that once required manual effort can now be automated, allowing attackers to generate realistic messages, launch campaigns, and adapt tactics quickly to evade security controls. In fact, KnowBe4’s 2025 Phishing Threat Trends Report found that more than 73% of phishing emails analyzed in 2024 showed signs of AI involvement. As a result, phishing threats are becoming harder to detect using traditional methods alone.

Voice phishing (vishing) overtook email-based phishing as a top initial intrusion vector in 2025, according to a new report from Mandiant. Notably, vishing is live and interactive, giving the attacker more control over the social engineering objectives. “While email phishing often relies on volume and opportunistic delivery, interactive methods involve a live person steering the conversation in real-time,” Mandiant says.

In the world of cybersecurity, busy is an understatement. SOC teams are often drowning in a sea of repetitive alerts. Looking at the same threat or graymail spread across 50 pages of logs isn't just tedious, it’s a drain on your most valuable resource: time. That is why we are introducing Campaign Mode for KnowBe4 Defend. It’s time to stop chasing individual emails and start managing at scale.