FIG. 15 depicts a comparison of a trusted message 400 and a phishing attack message 450 (whether simulated or real). Whereas the trusted message 400 contains actual information necessary to a recipient, e.g. an employee, the phishing attack message is disguised to look as if it were from a trusted source. The phishing attack message 450 may have similar logos 452, artwork 454, and text 456 as a trusted message 400 from an organization would (i.e. logo 402, artwork 404, and text 406). A phishing attack message 450 may even appear to have a valid email address 458 associated with the organization, as in email 408 of the trusted message 400. The links 460 and attachments 462 in the phishing attack message 450, however, may contain malicious code or attempt to gain secure information, such as passwords, from the user. A simulated phishing attack message may be generated in a phishing simulation module. The phishing simulation module may provide a template message that can contain placeholders for, e.g., an employee name, a company name, a human resource representative, a human resource job title, a human resource email address, a human resource phone number, a company logo and a name of an attached file. FIG. 15 further depicts a simulated phishing attack constructed from the template message in the phishing simulation module. In the message depicted in FIG. 15, the recipient of the message is Employee who works at Technology Platform. The message is disguised to appear as if it were actually sent from John Smith, although it was, in fact, sent from a network server device conducting a simulated phishing attack. John Smith's job title, email address and phone number are included so that the message appears to be a legitimate email sent from Smith. The company logo 454 also helps to disguise the email as a legitimate email from Smith. The attachment name 462 is a fictitious name “Health Care Benefits 2013 ver2.ppt” made to resemble the name of an attachment 412 that the recipient (i.e., Employee) might expect to receive with such email.
