KnowBe4, Inc. is an American cybersecurity company based in Clearwater, Florida. Its business is built on a simple observation: technical safeguards alone cannot prevent attacks that exploit trust, inattention or working habits. It offers businesses and government agencies a platform designed to raise employee awareness, test their responses and make suspicious messages easier to handle. Its official website is knowbe4.com.
From awareness to human risk management
KnowBe4 was founded in 2010 by Stu Sjouwerman, an entrepreneur from the software industry. It grew around IT security training and phishing simulations, which replicate fraudulent emails designed to obtain login credentials, induce a payment or trigger an action that compromises security. This approach aims to embed vigilance in everyday practices rather than limit it to one-off training.
Listed on Nasdaq in 2021, the company was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2023 and subsequently delisted. In 2024, it acquired Egress, a British email security specialist. This acquisition expanded its scope beyond awareness training, notably adding capabilities to protect against incoming threats and prevent errors in outgoing messages.
Training, measurement and threat handling
The core offering combines educational content, simulation campaigns and monitoring tools. Security managers can organize exercises, tailor learning paths to user profiles and observe behavior in response to manipulation attempts. Training covers topics including phishing, passwords, social engineering and the protection of business information. Multilingual content helps support organizations operating in several countries.
KnowBe4 also offers PhishER, a solution designed to triage and analyze emails reported by employees. The aim is to turn these reports into actionable information for security teams while limiting repetitive tasks. With technologies acquired from Egress, the company is thus bringing together employee learning, behavioral analysis and email protection.
The value of this approach nevertheless depends on its implementation. The click rate during an exercise does not, on its own, capture an organization’s resilience. Results must be interpreted in light of the business context, ease of reporting and technical safeguards already in place.
What comes next?
The spread of generative artificial intelligence tools makes it easier to produce convincing, personalized fraudulent messages. For KnowBe4, the challenge will be to connect training more closely to real-world situations without overwhelming employees with unnecessary prompts. Integrating Egress’s capabilities is also a major undertaking. The effectiveness of the combined offering will be measured by its ability to reduce incidents, speed up their handling and strengthen a security culture that encourages reporting rather than blame.