Your technical controls are only as strong as the person who clicks the link.
Here is something worth sitting with. You can have a properly configured firewall, have an excellent endpoint protection and a mature application security An attacker who cannot get through any of that will send one of your staff a convincing email instead. And statistically, someone will click it.
According to the Australian Signals Directorate, phishing featured in 60% of all cyber incidents reported to the ACSC in 2024-25. Over 84,700 cybercrime reports were lodged in Australia last year, roughly one every six minutes. The average cost of a cyber incident for a large Australian business now sits at $202,700. And AI is making the problem worse, not better. Synthetic phishing emails, deepfake voices and highly personalised lures are now accessible to attackers who previously lacked the capability to produce them convincingly.
None of your technical controls address this. They are not designed to. The human layer requires a different kind of investment.
Phase Pacific helps Australian organisations reduce that risk through structured security awareness programs built on the KnowBe4 platform. We offer three levels of involvement depending on how much your team can manage internally, from a one-time professional setup through to ongoing full management and strategic partnership.
Why Most Security Awareness Training Does Not Work
Ask most security managers whether their organisation does security awareness training and the answer is yes. Ask whether it is actually changing behaviour and the answer gets more complicated.
The standard approach is an annual e-learning module. It is generic, it is passive, and most staff treat it as something to click through quickly to get the completion certificate. Nobody learns anything durable from it. The compliance box gets ticked. Six months later someone clicks a phishing email on a busy afternoon because nothing about how they think in that moment has changed.
The research on this is fairly clear. What changes behaviour around phishing is being caught by a realistic simulation, understanding specifically why you were fooled, and experiencing that enough times that the hesitation becomes automatic. An employee who has been caught three times by a well-constructed simulated phishing email develops an instinct that an annual module cannot produce.
That is the model KnowBe4 is built on, and it is why organisations that run consistent simulation programs typically see their susceptibility rates drop dramatically within the first year. The training is continuous, the simulations are realistic and updated regularly to reflect current attack techniques, and the feedback is immediate rather than retrospective.
Phase Pacific’s role is to make that model work in your specific organisation rather than in theory.
What We Cover
User Awareness Training
[User Awareness Training] is continuous rather than annual. Staff receive short, relevant training content matched to their role and their behaviour over time. Someone in your finance team gets content about payment redirection fraud and invoice scams. A developer gets content about social engineering targeting technical staff. Someone who has repeatedly clicked on simulated phishing emails gets more targeted content than someone who has been consistently vigilant. The KnowBe4 content library covers over 1,000 modules across more than 35 languages. Phase Pacific configures the delivery schedule, sets up the Smart Groups that target training to the right people, and depending on the service level you choose, either hands it over to your administrator or manages it on your behalf going forward.
Phishing Simulation
[Phishing Simulation] is where the real work happens. Phase Pacific configures and manages ongoing simulated phishing campaigns that reflect the techniques currently being used against Australian organisations -- AI-generated lures, impersonation of the ATO, myGov and major Australian banks, and scenarios specific to your industry and organisational context. When someone clicks, they do not get an email from IT telling them off. They get an immediate, in-context learning moment that explains what they missed and what to look for. Staff who fail are automatically enrolled in remedial training without anyone having to manually manage it. Your organisation's Phish-prone Percentage gets tracked and reported so you can see a real number moving in the right direction rather than a completion rate that tells you nothing about actual risk.
Security Awareness Platform
[Security Awareness Platform] is the KnowBe4 environment that ties everything together -- training delivery, phishing simulation, automated remedial training, staff-reported phishing triage through PhishER, real-time behavioural coaching through SecurityCoach and compliance reporting through Compliance Plus. How much of this Phase Pacific manages depends on which level of service you choose. At the entry level, we set it up properly and train your administrator to run it. At the other end, we manage the whole thing, respond to reported threats daily and sit down with your leadership team every quarter to review where the program is going.
The most common AppSec failure isn’t buying the wrong tool. It’s buying the right tool and never properly embedding it. Security scanners that aren’t integrated into your CI/CD pipeline get skipped. Findings that aren’t triaged properly get ignored. Developers who weren’t involved in the rollout find workarounds.
We’ve seen it plenty of times, and it’s what we specifically set out to avoid.
When Phase Pacific comes on board, we help you choose the right combination of tools for where your organisation is right now, not where a vendor brochure says you should be. We configure everything to match your development workflow and compliance obligations. We integrate scanning into your pipelines so checks happen automatically, without someone having to remember to run them. And we work with your developers directly so the tools become part of how they work, rather than something the security team bolted on without asking.
Australian-based support is included. If something breaks or a critical vulnerability surfaces, you’re not logging a ticket into a global queue.
Real Outcomes from Australian Organisations
How We Work With You
Not every organisation needs the same level of involvement from us. Some have capable internal IT teams who just need a properly configured starting point. Others want the program running without placing any additional burden on staff who are already stretched. Others need a genuine strategic partner who can connect security awareness to broader risk management conversations at the board level.
We have structured our service around that reality.
If you have internal capacity to run the platform day to day
we do a one-time professional setup. That means proper configuration, user management integration, a baseline phishing test to establish where your organisation starts, an initial training campaign, Phish Alert Button deployment and a 60-minute handover session with your administrator. You leave with a working platform and the knowledge to operate it. We step back.
If you want us to run it for you
we manage monthly phishing campaigns, quarterly training campaigns, automated remedial training for staff who fail, ongoing user management and a monthly summary report to your key contact. Your team acts as internal champion and communicates with staff. We handle the rest.
If you want a genuine partnership
we manage PhishER so your reported phishing emails are triaged and responded to daily. We build a 12-month strategic campaign calendar. We create custom-branded phishing templates. We run a Security Awareness Proficiency Assessment to understand where your organisation's real vulnerabilities sit. And we meet with your leadership team every quarter with executive-level reporting on risk, progress and benchmarks.
Book a Free Consultation to Discuss Which Level Is Right for You
Who We Work With
Human risk is universal. The consequences vary considerably.
Government agencies where staff access sensitive citizen data. Defence contractors where a compromised credential has clearance implications. Financial services firms where business email compromise is a direct path to fraud. Healthcare organisations where patient data and operational continuity are both on the line.
We also get called in after something has gone wrong, or nearly gone wrong, and the organisation needs to show its board, its insurer or a regulator that it has taken concrete, measurable steps to address human risk. The monthly and quarterly reporting our managed tiers produce is exactly what those conversations require.
We work with organisations across Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and throughout Australia and New Zealand.
Why Phase Pacific
Buying KnowBe4 directly gets you a licence. What it does not get you is a local partner who configures the platform correctly, manages it continuously and connects your human risk program to how the rest of your security environment works.
That last part matters more than it sounds. A phishing simulation program sits in a different context when it is run by a partner who also understands your endpoint protection, your application security controls and your compliance obligations.
We know what a credential compromise looks like at the endpoint level and what an attacker would reach if the phishing attempt succeeded. That changes how we think about which simulations to run, which staff to focus on and what the reporting needs to show.
We have been doing this kind of work with Australian telecommunications, Defence and enterprise organisations for over 20 years. We implement, configure and support what we recommend. Flexible payment terms are available.
Phase Pacific is pleased to offer flexible payment terms.
Phone Number
+61 3 9381 7818
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is security awareness training important for Australian organisations?
Why use Phase Pacific rather than buying KnowBe4 directly?
What is a phish-prone percentage and why does it matter?
How long before we see results?
Does the program support Australian compliance requirements?
What happens when staff report a suspicious email?
Industries We Commonly Support:
Solution tools
Phase Pacific delivers application security through:
Let's Talk About Your Human Risk
If your current approach to security awareness is an annual module and a completion report, the gap between that and genuine behaviour change is worth understanding before an attacker finds it first.