Case Study: Whitbread achieves 31% phishing-report rate and boosts employee engagement with KnowBe4

Gamifying the Way to Phishing Resilience at Whitbread

Whitbread, a multinational hospitality company, faced low simulated-phishing email reporting among its 1,500 support-center staff despite having KnowBe4’s training and phishing platform already in place. Initial testing using KnowBe4 templates showed a Phish-prone™ Percentage (PPP) of about 5% but only a 2% report rate with the Phish Alert Button installed, so Whitbread needed a way to measurably improve user behavior and reporting.

Working with the KnowBe4 platform, Whitbread ran a baseline phishing test, assigned targeted remedial training and quizzes, promoted the Phish Alert Button, used Smart Groups to tailor campaigns, and staged a gamified, multi-week phishing tournament (9 rounds, ~2,000 emails, prizes). The KnowBe4-driven program boosted reporting from 2% to 31% in under a year (with an intermediate jump to 25% after a few months), generated about 150 user messages to the infosec inbox, increased engagement (nearly a quarter of users took part in the tournament), and strengthened communication between users and the security team.

Whitbread

Elise Mutch

Information Security Awareness and Communications Manager