Phishing Simulation

Metrics & KPI Glossary

Definitions for the numbers you'll see across PhishGrid dashboards and reports. A "rate" is the share of a campaign's targeted recipients.

Delivery & engagement

  • Sent / Delivered — messages accepted by the recipient's mail server. A gap usually means whitelisting issues or bounces.
  • Viewed / Opened — the recipient loaded the email (tracked via a pixel). Under-counts are normal — see How Are Emails Detected as "Viewed"?.
  • Clicked — the recipient clicked the simulated link. The primary risk signal.
  • Submitted data / Compromised — the recipient entered data on the landing page (e.g. credentials). The strongest risk signal.
  • Reported — the recipient reported the message as suspicious. A positive signal — higher is better.

Rates

  • View / Click / Submit / Report rate — each metric ÷ recipients, as a percentage.
  • Susceptibility vs. resilience — click and submit measure susceptibility; report rate measures good behaviour. Track both.

Quality signals

  • Bot / automated clicks — clicks generated by security scanners, not humans. PhishGrid filters these; see Bot Detection. Impossibly high or instant click rates usually mean a scanner is pre-fetching links — re-check your exclusions.

Reading the numbers

Opens are the least reliable metric (image blocking and proxies); trust click and report most. Compare against your own trend over time rather than absolute benchmarks. See Interpreting Your Results and Reporting to Management.