2026 Phishing Benchmarks: Analyzing Click Rates by Industry, Size, and AI Impact for NIS2 Compliance

The global 2026 phishing benchmarks reveal that organizations without a consistent training program exhibit an initial Phish-Prone Percentage (PPP) of 33.1% to 34.3%. For companies regulated under the NIS2 Directive, understanding these click rates is a legal necessity for proactively managing the human element of digital risk, ensuring operational resilience and protecting the C-suite from personal liability.

The cybersecurity landscape of 2026 marks a definitive shift from opportunistic fraud to the industrialized exploitation of the human element. Phishing remains the primary catalyst for organizational compromise, initiating up to 22% of confirmed global breaches. With the maturity of Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) ecosystems, threat actors now distribute roughly 3.4 billion emails daily with corporate-level efficiency and precision.

To build a "Zero Trust" human environment, firms must transition from occasional compliance checks to deploying modern attack simulation cycles. These simulations provide the critical security awareness stats required to demonstrate due diligence before European regulators and effectively counter the rising efficacy of AI-driven social engineering.

Global Phishing Market Data: Volume and Evasion Trends

In 2026, market data confirms that global phishing activity has reached unprecedented scale, with roughly 3.4 billion malicious emails distributed daily. This surge is primarily driven by the professionalization of the Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) ecosystem, which has reduced the cost of launching complex attacks and pushed the average cost of a phishing-initiated breach to $4.8 million.

The 2026 Resurgence: Scaling Threats with Generative AI

The volume of social engineering attacks has reached a staggering 1.13 million incidents per quarter. This growth is no longer just about quantity; it is about the unprecedented scale enabled by Generative AI. Attackers are now using automated tools to eliminate the traditional "red flags" of phishing—such as poor grammar or generic templates—and creating hyper-personalized lures at a fraction of the previous cost.

This industrialization of cybercrime is shifting the 2026 phishing benchmarks, making it harder for technical filters to catch sophisticated evasions. Organizations are finding that traditional security awareness stats are being challenged by these "Zero-Day" social engineering tactics that bypass standard email gateways.

The Cost of Inaction: Financial Stakes and Detection Gaps

For companies governed by NIS2 and DORA, the financial consequences of a successful attack are more severe than ever. According to Verizon’s 2025 DBIR, phishing remains a top-three initial access vector, while the ENISA Threat Landscape (released Oct 2025) notes that it accounts for 60% of observed intrusions.

The most alarming metric for CISOs in 2026 is the 254-day median detection window for phishing-related breaches. During this period, attackers can move laterally, exfiltrate data, and deploy ransomware. To prevent these long-term compromises, firms must prioritize meeting operational resilience requirements for EU directives by building a robust human firewall that can identify and report threats in real-time.

2026 Phishing Click Rate by Industry: The Vulnerability Matrix

The phishing click rate by industry in 2026 reveals a stark "Vulnerability Matrix," where the Hospitality (52.9%) and Education (50.2%) sectors lead in susceptibility. While highly regulated industries like Finance show lower baselines near 28.5%, no sector is immune to the industrialized nature of modern social engineering, making an industry comparison essential for setting realistic security baselines.

Critical Vulnerabilities in Hospitality and Education

In 2026, the Hospitality sector has become the most vulnerable, starting with an unmanaged click rate of 52.9%. This is driven by high staff turnover and a constant flow of external digital communications. Similarly, Education has seen a 224% surge in themed scams, often exploiting administrative pressures and decentralized IT environments. These sector benchmarks 2026 highlight that where operational stress is high, human error is almost guaranteed without behavioral intervention.

Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals: High Stakes, High Risk

The Healthcare and Pharmaceutical sectors face a dangerous Phish-Prone Percentage (PPP) between 41.9% and 48.2%. The combination of urgent medical administrative tasks and the extreme value of R&D data makes these organizations prime targets for "Omni-threats." To mitigate these risks, CISOs must look beyond generic training and implement sector-specific threat landscapes and defensive measures tailored to their unique operational workflows.

For deeper technical guidance, the official ENISA cyber hygiene in the health sector report provides a roadmap for securing these high-value environments.

Resilience Leaders: Finance and Technology

Financial Services and Tech companies currently lead in resilience, maintaining lower baseline click rates around 28.5%. This is not due to a lack of threats, but rather a long-standing commitment to layered defense and "phishing-resistant" cultures. Under the pressure of DORA and NIS2, these sectors have matured their security awareness stats by prioritizing reporting rates over simple click avoidance.

The latest ENISA report for the finance sector details how these entities map social engineering risks to meet strict operational resilience metrics.

Sector Risk Comparison (Untrained Baseline)

• Hospitality: 52.9% (Highest vulnerability due to transactional volume).
• Education: 50.2% (Driven by rapid digitalization and open networks).
• Healthcare: 41.9% - 48.2% (Targeted for sensitive data and high-pressure environments).
• Manufacturing: 37.5% (Increasingly targeted via supply chain lures).
• Finance/Tech: 28.5% (Resilience leaders with matured security cultures).

Organizational Size: Scale vs. Security Maturity

The phishing click rate by company size in 2026 reveals that larger organizations (10,000+ employees) face a 40.5% baseline susceptibility, nearly double that of small businesses. While size provides more resources for defense, it also introduces "Identity Sprawl"—a phenomenon where the sheer volume of employees makes it impossible to verify every internal communication, significantly inflating enterprise vs. SMB benchmarks.

The SMB Gap: High Stakes, Low Margin for Error

Small organizations (1–249 employees) currently show a lower 24.6% baseline according to the 2026 phishing benchmarks. This is often attributed to interpersonal familiarity; employees are more likely to notice when a request from a colleague seems "off." However, for small firms, a single click is often an existential threat. Market data shows that 60% of small businesses fold within six months of a major data breach, making these security awareness stats a matter of survival rather than just compliance.

The Enterprise Paradox: The Cost of Complexity

For very large enterprises, the challenge is structural. With tens of thousands of staff members, the "human firewall" is under constant pressure from decentralized communication and diverse departmental cultures. This complexity requires a more sophisticated financial approach, specifically when budgeting for human risk management across enterprise scales to meet the rigorous oversight demanded by the NIS2 Directive.

To maintain resilience, large-scale organizations must transition from generic training to behavioral analytics that can pinpoint specific high-risk units. Understanding your specific phishing click rate by industry and size is the only way to allocate resources effectively and avoid the "Identity Sprawl" trap.

The Generative AI Catalyst: Redefining Click Efficacy

In 2026, AI-driven phishing has fundamentally dismantled the traditional "red flag" detection model, pushing click rates to a record high of 54%. By weaponizing Generative AI, threat actors have automated the creation of hyper-personalized lures that eliminate linguistic errors and mimic corporate tone, making it nearly impossible for untrained employees to distinguish a malicious email from a legitimate internal communication.

Hyper-Personalization: The Death of the "Tell-Tale Sign"

Standard indicators like poor grammar or generic greetings no longer reliably identify modern phishing. Today, GenAI phishing efficiency stems from its ability to scrape public data and internal leaked communications to craft "surgical" lures. These AI-generated emails achieve click rates four times higher than traditional manual templates.

This shift has forced security teams to move beyond basic checklists. To mitigate these threats, CISOs are now focusing on establishing governance for AI usage to mitigate internal risks, ensuring that the same technology used by attackers is governed and understood within the organization. According to the MITRE ATLAS (Adversarial Threat Landscape for Artificial-Intelligence Systems) framework, the industrialization of AI in social engineering has drastically lowered the barrier to entry for high-impact campaigns.

Multi-Channel Evasion: The "Threat Spotlight"

Attackers are no longer confined to the inbox. In 2026, we are witnessing the rise of "Omni-threats" that target employees across multiple digital touchpoints. This multi-channel approach significantly complicates the industry comparison of risk:

• Smishing (SMS Phishing): Boasts a 25.7% click rate, often bypassing corporate email filters entirely by targeting personal and business mobile devices.
• Vishing & Deepfake Voice: Synthetic audio is now used to impersonate executives in "CEO Fraud" scenarios. Protecting your organization from deepfake-enhanced social engineering is now a top priority for firms managing high-value transactions.
• QRishing (QR Code Phishing): Malicious QR codes have seen a 224% surge in sectors like Education, hiding malicious URLs from traditional gateway scanners.

These advanced threats from deepfakes to malicious QR codes require a transition to behavioral-based defense, as technical filters struggle to keep pace with non-textual evasion techniques.

The 21-Second Window: Why Reactive Security Fails

The most alarming metric in the 2026 benchmarks is the median time to click: a staggering 21 seconds. From the moment a malicious email bypasses the gateway, organizations have less than half a minute before the first compromise occurs.

This speed renders reactive technical intervention obsolete. Because the MITRE ATT&CK T1566 technique remains the most effective way for adversaries to gain initial access, the only viable defense is a proactive, well-trained workforce. In a world where AI scales the attack, your "Human Firewall" is the only component capable of making a split-second judgment call to report rather than click.

From Click Rates to Reporting Rates: The Path to NIS2 Resilience

In 2026, the ultimate metric for NIS2 compliance is the "reporting rate," as simply avoiding a click is no longer sufficient to prove a resilient security culture. Organizations that prioritize active threat reporting over passive avoidance can reduce their Phish-Prone Percentage (PPP) to as low as 1.5% within twelve months, transforming employees from targets into sensors that feed your SOC in real-time.

The 90-Day Transformation and Training Efficacy

Proving phishing simulation effectiveness requires moving beyond binary "clicked/didn't click" data. Current security awareness stats demonstrate a clear "transformation curve" for organizations that commit to recurring behavioral training:

• Baseline Vulnerability: Untrained organizations start with a dangerous 33.1% to 34.3% susceptibility.
• The 90-Day Mark: Consistent monthly simulations trigger a 40% drop in PPP, bringing it down to approximately 18%–20%.
• The One-Year Milestone: Long-term vulnerability stabilizes between 1.5% and 4.6%, depending on the industry.

A critical factor in this success is the "Golden Window" of training. Employees who have received a simulation or training session within the last 30 days are four times more likely to report an active threat than those on a quarterly or annual schedule. For the board, this level of engagement is the most effective way of demonstrating due diligence to avoid personal liability for leadership under the personal accountability mandates of NIS2.

Analyzing Reporting Rate Benchmarks by Industry

Resilience is unevenly distributed across the European market. For CISOs and HR directors, tracking human risk KPIs and reporting effectiveness is the only way to benchmark their internal culture against competitors and regulatory expectations.

• Financial Services: Currently leads the market with a 32.35% reporting rate, setting the standard for a "reporting-first" culture.
• Healthcare: Shows moderate resilience with an 18.4% reporting rate, though high stress often prevents employees from completing the reporting loop.
• Education: Remains the most vulnerable sector with a 7.71% reporting rate, highlighting a critical need for cultural shifts.

By building a simulation framework that proves ROSI, you can transition from a reactive posture to a "Shift-Left" strategy where the human element becomes a proactive line of defense.

Conclusion: Turning the "Weakest Link" into Human Firewalls

The 2026 phishing benchmarks provide a clear diagnostic of global cyber risk: phishing is no longer a static threat, but a dynamic, AI-optimized lifecycle. For CISOs and executive boards, the data confirms that a "Zero Trust" human environment cannot be achieved through technical filters alone. With a global baseline phishing click rate by industry fluctuating between 33.1% and 34.3%, the industrialization of social engineering has made human intervention the most critical variable in organizational resilience.

To navigate this landscape and meet the rigorous demands of the NIS2 Directive, organizations must shift their strategy from reactive technical patches to proactive Human Risk Management (HRM). The path to resilience in 2026 is defined by three pillars:

• Frequency Over Intensity: Monthly simulations are the only way to trigger the "transformation curve" that reduces vulnerability from over 30% to as low as 1.5% within a year.
• The Reporting Revolution: Success is no longer measured solely by who avoids the click, but by who flags the threat. A high reporting rate—ideally above 30% in regulated sectors—is the ultimate proof of a healthy, compliant security culture.
• AI-Ready Defenses: As GenAI pushes click rates to 54%, your security awareness stats must reflect your team's ability to identify hyper-personalized, multi-channel "Omni-threats" like smishing and vishing.

Kymatio empowers organizations to master these benchmarks by providing an integrated HRM platform designed for the NIS2 era. By automating sophisticated attack simulations and providing real-time behavioral analytics, Kymatio helps you transform your employees from potential targets into an agile sensor network that identifies threats faster than any technical gateway.