A weak programme shows up when users still trust lookalike retailer emails, click on shipping notices without checking details, or treat social media promotions as automatically approved. Another warning sign is when awareness content is generic and not tied to the seasonal threats employees and customers actually face. If users cannot describe the common scam patterns, the programme has not landed.
How to tell when the programme is not changing behaviour
The clearest failure signal is that people still do the risky thing after training. If employees still trust lookalike retailer messages, open shipping notices without checking the sender or link destination, or treat seasonal promotions as automatically legitimate, the programme has not shifted day-to-day judgement. A successful awareness effort changes what users notice, question, and verify before they click.
Another sign is that awareness remains abstract. If the content talks about “scams” in general but does not help users recognise holiday-specific lures, the message is too generic to stick. Seasonal awareness only works when it connects to the actual bait patterns people will see during the period it is meant to cover.
Where weak content and weak timing show up
A failing programme often looks polished on paper but disconnected in practice. Generic slides, one-time email blasts, and content that is not refreshed for the season usually miss the context that makes holiday scam effective. People need repeated exposure to the exact forms of deception they are likely to encounter, not just a reminder that fraud exists.
Timing matters as much as content. If the first meaningful reminder arrives after the campaign peak, or if the message is delivered once and never reinforced, the programme is functioning as communication, not as behaviour change. The test is whether the seasonal threat window is matched by timely, repeated, and specific guidance.
When people cannot describe the common scam patterns in plain language, that is a strong indication the programme has not landed. Recognition should be observable in conversation, not just in completion rates or training records.
What operational evidence tells you the awareness is failing
Look for evidence outside the training platform, because quiz scores alone can be misleading. Failed programmes tend to show up in help desk tickets, phishing reports, user questions, and incident reviews: users keep asking whether a message is real only after they have already engaged with it, or they never escalate suspicious messages at all.
The best indicator is behavioural consistency under pressure. A holiday scam awareness programme should reduce clicks on lookalike messages, increase verification before action, and make suspicious promotions more likely to be reported early. If those signals do not improve, the programme is not building durable recognition.
Seasonal awareness content should also be specific enough to support NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 style governance over awareness, because the goal is not just education but measurable change in how people recognise and respond to likely threats. Holiday phishing also aligns with the kinds of trust-abuse patterns tracked in MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Matrix, especially when the scam is designed to induce user action rather than exploit a technical flaw.
Risk and Threat Considerations
Holiday scams work because they exploit attention, urgency, and routine trust. When the awareness programme fails, the organisation is left with a larger attack surface in the exact period when staff and customers are most likely to respond quickly and think later. That increases the chance of credential theft, payment diversion, and fraud escalation.
Failure mechanism: Users do not internalise the warning signs, so familiar-looking messages bypass judgement and trigger clicks, disclosures, or approvals that should have been paused and checked.
Impact: Attackers gain a cheaper and more reliable path to fraud, account compromise, and downstream social engineering because the human decision layer is not acting as a control.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
MITRE ATT&CK addresses the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 and CIS Controls v8 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| NIST CSF 2.0 | GV.OC-03 — Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management | Seasonal scam awareness needs clear communication and accountability for user-facing risk education. |
| PR.AT-01 — Awareness and Training Program | The question is about signs that security awareness training is not changing behavior. | |
| DE.AE-02 — Adverse Event Analysis | Failure signs are observed through abnormal user responses, reports, and incidents during scam season. | |
| Recommendation — Tie holiday scam awareness to an owned program with measurable audience and threat coverage. Refresh awareness content for current holiday lures and verify behavior change, not completion. Analyze user-report and incident patterns to spot when scam awareness is not reducing exposure. | ||
| CIS Controls v8 | CIS-14 — Security Awareness and Skills Training | This is directly about the effectiveness of security awareness training against phishing and scam behavior. |
| Recommendation — Use recurring, scenario-based scam training and test whether users can recognize current lures. | ||
| MITRE ATT&CK | T1566 — Phishing | Holiday scams commonly rely on phishing-like delivery to lure users into unsafe action. |
| Recommendation — Map seasonal scam messages to phishing tactics and monitor for repeated user engagement. | ||
Practitioner Guidance
What to verify: Check whether users can identify the current seasonal lures without prompting, not whether they can pass a generic awareness quiz. If they cannot explain why a message is suspicious in their own words, the programme needs revision.
What to measure: Track whether reporting rates rise before click rates fall, whether suspicious messages are escalated earlier, and whether holiday-specific simulations produce fewer false approvals over time. Those signals tell you whether the programme is changing behaviour or merely increasing exposure to content.
Common mistake: Treating awareness as a once-a-year campaign instead of a seasonally tuned control. The content has to be refreshed for the scams people actually see, or it will become background noise.
Practitioner takeaway: A holiday scam awareness programme is failing when users still recognise the season only after they have already interacted with the scam, because the control has not translated into faster suspicion and safer action.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
- What are the signs that a security awareness programme is failing to reduce cyber risk?
- What are the signs that a DORA compliance programme is failing in practice?
- What are the signs that a pentesting programme is failing to keep pace with delivery?
- What are the signs that an SBOM programme is failing in practice?
Deepen Your Knowledge
Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on September 28, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
