So many security teams still measure phishing with the click rate. It’s easy to track and easy to put in a slide deck, but it’s also misleading. Measuring clicks is like "measuring the tide coming and going"—it fluctuates naturally and rarely predicts real-world impact.
The more meaningful question is the one most programs can’t answer: If an attacker gets into a mailbox, how much damage can they do?
That is your true maturity metric. Not completion rates, and not who remembered to hover over a URL. Even if your click rates are minuscule, all it takes is a single employee not paying attention. Not to mention the growing prevalence of inbox breaches that occur without any phishing attack at all.
Phishing is just one possible entrance; the crisis happens next
In the incidents that keep CISOs awake, phishing is just how access is obtained. The real problem is what happens once an attacker is inside:
They exfiltrate years of sensitive mailbox data and shared files.
They use the mailbox to reset passwords for downstream apps.
They use the compromised identity to phish other employees from a trusted source.
MFA isn't a silver bullet here—there are plenty of ways into a cloud workspace that bypass it entirely. If compromises are inevitable, the goal shifts from perfect prevention to resilience.
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