Security awareness training software: AI search visibility ranking (2026)
How AI search engines rank security awareness training software by visibility and citations. 20 brands measured monthly across Google AI Mode: which brands the AI names in answers, which domains it cites as sources, and how the leaders compare. Security awareness training platforms used to educate employees, run phishing simulations, improve reporting behavior, and reduce human-driven security risk. Composite score: 70% visibility (% of AI answers naming the brand) + 30% citation rate (% citing the brand's domain). Full methodology →
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When AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity field questions about security awareness training software, KnowBe4 comes up most often by a wide margin, appearing in 25% of all tracked AI responses and earning citations in 62.5% of them. Hoxhunt and Proofpoint round out the top three, but neither approaches KnowBe4's dominance across the five AI engines tracked here.
The citation pattern explains a lot. KnowBe4's own domain (knowbe4.com) is the single most cited source, followed by gartner.com, then hoxhunt.com and livingsecurity.com. Gartner's presence near the top matters because AI engines treat analyst coverage as third-party validation, meaning brands with strong Gartner Magic Quadrant placement or Peer Insights reviews get pulled into AI answers far more frequently than brands relying on their own content alone.
For a buyer using this page, the practical takeaway is to look beyond raw AI visibility and check where that visibility comes from. A brand ranking high because it dominates its own domain is different from one ranking high because Gartner, G2, or similar third-party sources consistently back it up. Prioritize brands with recent, verified reviews on aggregator and analyst platforms, since those are exactly the signals AI engines weight most heavily.
At a glance
What we observed in this category
KnowBe4 leads the security awareness training category with a visibility score of 25.0%, more than double the 12.5% held by Hoxhunt, Proofpoint, and NINJIO. Its composite score of 36.2 is over 12 points clear of the next brand. The category average visibility sits at just 3.8%, meaning KnowBe4 captures roughly 6.6 times that average. This gap signals that Google AI Mode has a strong default preference for one brand when surfacing this category, compressing meaningful competition into a narrow tier below.
A clear divergence exists between being named and being cited. Usecure and Living Security each hold 0.0% visibility yet both achieve 50.0% citation rates, ranking them above Arctic Wolf which has 12.5% visibility but only 12.5% citations. Hoxhunt shows the inverse pattern to Proofpoint: both share 12.5% visibility, but Hoxhunt's citation rate of 50.0% is double Proofpoint's 25.0%. Being named in AI responses and having your domain cited as a source are clearly decoupled signals in this category.
Google AI Mode is the top engine for every brand in this dataset, confirming the audit is anchored entirely on that single surface. Among cited sources, knowbe4.com and gartner.com appear alongside hoxhunt.com and livingsecurity.com, suggesting AI responses blend brand-owned content with analyst and review authority. The presence of reddit.com and youtube.com in the top cited sources list indicates Google AI Mode is pulling from community and video content when constructing answers about this category, not only from vendor or analyst pages.
Movers & shakers since last refresh
Biggest visibility risers
-
KnowBe4 12% → 25% · rank #1 → #1+12pp
-
NINJIO 0% → 12% · rank #10 → #4+12pp
Biggest visibility fallers
-
Keepnet 12% → 0% · rank #4 → #8-12pp
-
Mimecast 12% → 0% · rank #5 → #9-12pp
-
Cofense 12% → 0% · rank #9 → #14-12pp
The ranking
| # | Brand | Visibility | Citation | Top engine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
knowbe4.com
|
25% | 62% | Google AI Mode |
KnowBe4 leads with 25.0% visibility and a 62.5% citation rate, both the highest in the category, sitting well above the 3.8% average visibility across all 20 brands. |
||||
| 2 |
hoxhunt.com
|
12% | 50% | Google AI Mode |
Hoxhunt matches Proofpoint and NINJIO on visibility at 12.5% but doubles their citation rate at 50.0%, making it the most citation-efficient brand outside of KnowBe4. |
||||
| 3 |
proofpoint.com
|
12% | 25% | Google AI Mode |
Proofpoint holds 12.5% visibility but a citation rate of only 25.0%, the same as NINJIO, suggesting Google AI Mode names it without anchoring heavily on its domain as a source. |
||||
| 4 |
ninjio.com
|
12% | 25% | Google AI Mode |
NINJIO is the category's biggest rank riser, jumping from rank 10 to rank 4 after gaining 12.5 visibility points, though its citation rate held flat at 25.0%. |
||||
| 5 |
usecure.io
|
0% | 50% | Google AI Mode |
Usecure achieves 0.0% visibility yet a 50.0% citation rate, the sharpest visibility-to-citation gap in the top 10, showing its domain is cited even when the brand is not named. |
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| 6 |
livingsecurity.com
|
0% | 50% | Google AI Mode |
| 7 |
arcticwolf.com
|
12% | 12% | Google AI Mode |
| 8 |
keepnetlabs.com
|
0% | 25% | Google AI Mode |
| 9 |
mimecast.com
|
0% | 12% | Google AI Mode |
| 10 |
terranovasecurity.com
|
0% | 12% | Google AI Mode |
| 11 |
infosecinstitute.com
|
0% | 12% | Google AI Mode |
| 12 |
ironscales.com
|
0% | 12% | Google AI Mode |
| 13 |
outthink.io
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 14 |
cofense.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 15 |
microsoft.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 16 |
metacompliance.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 17 |
phished.io
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 18 |
culture.ai
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 19 |
hooksecurity.co
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
| 20 |
sophos.com
|
0% | 0% | Google AI Mode |
Sources AI engines trust in this category
Across the 8 buyer-intent queries we ran on security awareness training software, these are the domains Google AI Mode cited most often. If you're not on this list — or if your competitors are — that's a concrete PR / linkbuilding target.
How to read this ranking
Four things worth knowing before you act on the numbers above. These are the same definitions across every industry page — for category-specific observations, see the What we observed section above (where available) and the per-brand insights inline in the ranking.
Visibility = being named
A brand's visibility % is the share of AI answers that mention it by name in the response prose. This is who AI engines actively recommend to the buyer. More on visibility →
Citation rate = being trusted
Citation rate is the share of AI answers that include the brand's domain as a clickable source link. This is what the AI treats as authoritative evidence, different from being named. More on citation rate →
Top engine differs by brand
The "top engine" column shows which AI surface each brand performs best on. Big gaps between a brand's score across engines usually points to specific content or schema gaps. How AI engines pick sources →
Rankings move month to month
AI engines re-crawl and re-rank on shorter cycles than classical search. We re-audit every brand on this list at least every 30 days and refresh this page automatically. How AI search ranking works →
Get your own security awareness training software brand audited
The brands above were curated from public market-leader lists. Want the same measurement against your own brand — including the queries you appear on, which competitors get named instead, and a prioritised fix list? Run a free preview.
Frequently asked about security awareness training software AI visibility
Who leads AI visibility in security awareness training software?
KnowBe4 leads with 25.0% visibility and a composite score of 36.2, more than double the visibility of the next tier of brands including Hoxhunt, Proofpoint, and NINJIO, all at 12.5%.
What sources does Google AI Mode cite most for security awareness training research?
The top cited sources include knowbe4.com, gartner.com, google.com, hoxhunt.com, livingsecurity.com, youtube.com, awarego.com, and reddit.com, indicating a mix of vendor, analyst, video, and community content.
Which brands have high citation rates but low visibility in this category?
Usecure and Living Security both show 0.0% visibility alongside 50.0% citation rates, meaning their domains are referenced as sources even though the brands are not prominently named in AI responses.
Which brands have seen the biggest changes in AI visibility recently?
KnowBe4 and NINJIO are the biggest risers, each gaining 12.5 visibility points, while Keepnet, Mimecast, and Cofense each lost 12.5 visibility points and now sit at 0.0%.
How concentrated is AI visibility across the security awareness training category?
Visibility is highly concentrated: KnowBe4 alone holds 25.0% against a category average of 3.8%, and eight of the top ten brands register either 12.5% or 0.0% visibility.
Does a higher visibility score always mean a higher citation rate in this category?
No. Hoxhunt and Usecure both achieve 50.0% citation rates despite Hoxhunt having only 12.5% visibility and Usecure having 0.0%, while KnowBe4's citation rate actually fell by 25.0 points even as its visibility rose.