Case Study: U.S. Energy Company reduces phishing susceptibility and protects the energy grid with Cofense

Protecting the Energy Grid from Phishing Attacks Using Cofense

U.S. Energy Company, a diversified energy and utility firm with $30 billion in assets, operations across 25 states, 3.1 million customers and 7,000 employees, faced a pressing phishing risk that could disrupt service and trigger NERC/CIP fines up to $1 million per violation per day. To strengthen employee awareness and reduce phishing susceptibility, the organization turned to Cofense, piloting Cofense PhishMe and later adopting Cofense Reporter and related Cofense training tools.

Cofense delivered a cloud-based, multi-language simulation and reporting program (Cofense PhishMe, Cofense Reporter, Cofense CBFree) rolled out from executives to frontline staff with no punitive measures. The program produced data-driven remediation, drove down susceptibility rates, helped a trained CFO spot and report a real spear-phish, improved enterprise reporting and visibility, and cost about $0.60 per employee per simulation—demonstrating measurable resilience gains and reduced operational and regulatory risk for the company.