KnowBe4 Defend, Prevent, Protect
Defend: Intelligent technologies detect sophisticated phishing attacks and engage users with contextual, colour-coded warnings .
Prevent: Intelligent technologies detect accidental and malicious data loss and engage users with real-time prompts.
Protect: Easy to use, certified encryption with flexible user controls and automatic encryption options supports your security policy.
Features
- Protects against sophisticated phishing attacks
- Protects against ransomware
- Detects anomalous behaviours using intelligent technologie
- Engages/empowers users with colour-coded, contextual warnings
- M-SOAR capabilities enable investigation and remediation
- Augments existing email security/ native security from your email platform
- Protects from supply chain attacks
- Link rewriting and time-of-click analysis detects post-delivery weaponised URLs
- Linguistic and contextual analysis detects signs of social engineering
- Productivity management improves user productivity and reduces admin burden
Benefits
- Reduces human-activated risk
- Lowers administration overhead with intelligent self-learning
- Reduces friction by engaging when risk is evident
- Supports migration to M365 email security
- Automated deployment in mailflow to avoid risks
- Lowers time to respond and remediate incidents
- Reduces risks from sophisticated phishing and BEC attacks
- Teachable moments positively change user behaviours
- Low time to demonstrate value
- Reinforces security awareness training to increase effectiveness
Pricing
Service documents
Request an accessible format
Framework
G-Cloud 15
Service ID
5 0 0 9 0 3 2 7 1 7 4 9 1 0 8
Contact
BYTES SOFTWARE SERVICES LIMITED
Richard Read
Telephone: 01372 418 500
Email: tenders@bytes.co.uk
About your service
- Service categories
-
Applications
Collaborative
- Multi cloud support
- No
Service scope
- Software add-on or extension
- No
- Cloud deployment model
- Public cloud
- Service constraints
- N/A
- System requirements
-
- MS 365 email
- MS Outlook 2013, 2016, 2019, … for M365
- Supported browsers (Chrome/Safari/Firefox etc) for admin console
User support
- Email or online ticketing support
- Yes, at extra cost
- Support response times
-
KnowBe4 provides email/online ticketing support Monday to Friday from 9 am to 6 pm GMT. We also have overseas offices that have extended hours as an option. Tickets received outside of office hours will be worked by the next available operations centre, however no action can be guaranteed until the next working day. Support is prioritised by subscription level and impact.
For full details on support hours please see: https://www.knowbe4.com/hubfs/KnowBe4-Support-Document.pdf?t=1518625292505&hsLang=ja-jp
Please see our standard Service Level Agreement (SLA) for response times: https://www.knowbe4.com/legal/service-level-agreement. - User can manage status and priority of support tickets
- No
- Phone support
- Yes
- Phone support availability
- 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
- Web chat support
- No
- Onsite support
- No
- Support levels
-
We have a standard Service Level Agreement which is available to all customers, accessible for review at https://www.knowbe4.com/legal/service-level-agreement.
Every customer is assigned a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) as part of their subscription, ensuring tailored support aligned with your organization’s unique goals and desired outcomes. CSMs are subject matter experts across all KnowBe4 products and serve as your liaison to technical support and product teams.
After deployment and onboarding, should you need any assistance, there are different options for getting in touch with us. The first is calling or emailing your CSM with your questions. If the CSM cannot address the issue, they will fill out a support ticket on your behalf. Alternatively, customers can submit a support ticket from the KnowBe4 platform/website or call our Help Desk line.
If the issue cannot be handled by our initial support, you would be directed to our Enterprise Support Level III. These support reps have the most intimate familiarity with KnowBe4 products, however, issues rarely come up that need this support. - Support available to third parties
- Yes
Onboarding and offboarding
- Getting started
-
Customers purchasing Defend can benefit from:
- A dedicated Professional Services engineer who will perform the installation and initial configuration until the customer is happy with the service
- Technical documentation and user guides which can be used for training purposes. - Service documentation
- Yes
- Documentation formats
-
- HTML
- End-of-contract data extraction
- Customers can export their data from the admin dashboard.
- End-of-contract process
- The customer should disable/remove any Microsoft 365 transport rules to stop emails routing to the Defend service.
- Documentation accessibility standard
- None or don’t know
- How the documentation is accessible
- Onboarding / offboarding documentation is provided to our customers by our Customer Success team. Some information, e.g. user guides are also available online via our website.
Using the service
- Web browser interface
- Yes
- Supported browsers
-
- Microsoft Edge
- Firefox
- Chrome
- Safari
- Opera
- Other
- Application to install
- No
- Designed for use on mobile devices
- Yes
- Differences between the mobile and desktop service
- Mobile friendly user interface with a condensed summary page
- Service interface
- Yes
- User support accessibility
- None or don’t know
- Description of service interface
- Informative banners are inserted into the email to indicate types and levels of phishing. The banners are clickable to display additional information about the threat.
- Accessibility standards
- None or don’t know
- Description of accessibility
-
KnowBe4 is committed to ensuring website accessibility for people with disabilities and those experiencing situational barriers. For example, our content is designed to meet the level AA standards for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.
All accessibility features are dependent on the email client and device being used to read email. Defend does not affect or impact any of the accessibility features that are already available to the user. - Accessibility testing
-
KnowBe4 is committed to ensuring website accessibility for people with disabilities and those experiencing situational barriers. For example, our content is designed to meet the level AA standards for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.
All accessibility features are dependent on the email client and device being used to read email. Defend does not affect or impact any of the accessibility features that are already available to the user. - API
- Yes
- What users can and can't do using the API
- The API is only available to Administrators of the service and is used for extracting metrics regarding emails processed and threats discovered. This is used to integrate into existing orchestration tools, such as siems, sores, socs etc
- API documentation
- Yes
- API documentation formats
- API sandbox or test environment
- No
- Customisation available
- Yes
- Description of customisation
-
Customisation can only be carried out by authorised staff through the administrator platform: Reporting range and filtering
Display of non threat banners
Turn on/off URL filtering
Handling of Dangerous URLs
Alerting options
Manage Allow list
Manage Deny list
Manage productivity allow list
Scaling
- Independence of resources
- Our services are built on scalable public cloud services and are architected to provide scalable solutions that minimise the impact of any specific customer. Each product is provisioned with the resources required to deliver the service. Shared components are built with redundancy and high-availability as a key element of their design.
Analytics
- Service usage metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
-
Infrastructure metrics, KnowBe4 platform operates with 99.9% uptime, to be reviewed annually
Application metrics. your administrators through the administrator page can view statistics associated with the detection of emails classified as Dangerous and Suspicious:
Types of phishing emails Types of Payload Supply Chain Health - Reporting types
- Real-time dashboards
- Resource tagging
- No
- FOCUS resource tagging
- No
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Reseller providing extra support
- Organisation whose services are being resold
- KnowBe4
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Other security clearance
- Government security clearance
- Developed Vetting (DV)
Asset protection
- Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Data storage and processing locations
- Other locations
- User control over data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Datacentre security standards
- Managed by a third party
- Penetration testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Penetration testing approach
- ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CREST-approved service provider
- Protecting data at rest
- Other
- Other data at rest protection approach
- KnowBe4 leverages AWS for data encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest (AES-GCM 256). KnowBe4 currently uses Load Balancer and CloudFront Security Policies supporting TLS 1.2 and higher. KnowBe4 uses the AWS Key Management Service (KMS) service to enable data at rest encryption across our products. We use this for encrypting data within databases, and data stored within object storage (S3). AWS KMS uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm in Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) with 256-bit secret keys.
- Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Equipment disposal approach
- Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v4.0, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001
- Data sanitisation type
-
- Deleted data can’t be directly accessed / Cryptographic Erasure
- Data Erasure
Data importing and exporting
- Data export approach
- Customers can export their data from the admin dashboard.
- Data export formats
- Other
- Data import formats
- Other
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- Data protection within supplier network
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
-
We have a standard Service Level Agreement which is available to all customers, accessible for review at https://www.knowbe4.com/legal/service-level-agreement.
As a SaaS provider serving a global customer base, we maintain a uniform SLA across our entire customer base. This consistency enables us to deliver reliable performance, scale efficiently, maintain our robust security protocols, and provide timely support to all customers.
KnowBe4 will remediate any agreed upon deficiencies within its stated vulnerability remediation SLA posted on https://www.knowbe4.com/terms. - Approach to resilience
- Our services are built on resilient public cloud services and is architected to provide a scalable solution that allows both vertical and horizontal scaling through the provisioning of appropriate resources to support customer requirements. Components are built with redundancy and high-availability as a key element of their design in order to ensure responsiveness and availability
- Outage reporting
- Public dashboard, For status and uptime monitoring refer to KnowBe4's status page - https://status.knowbe4.com
Identity and authentication
- User authentication needed
- Yes
- User authentication
- Other
- Other user authentication
-
KnowBe4 recommends customers to leverage SAML/SSO for authentication. KnowBe4 supports SAML 2.0 for SSO, so your users can quickly and easily log in to KnowBe4 using your organization's single sign-on provider, without having to set up or use a password. Please reference: https://support.knowbe4.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013730808-Does-KnowBe4-Support-SAML-SSO- Multi-factor authentication is also available. https://support.knowbe4.com/hc/en-us/articles/225681448-How-Do-I-Enable-Two-factor-or-Multi-factor-Authentication-on-My-Account-
Additionally, the KnowBe4 Active Directory Integration (ADI) feature allows you to leverage Active Directory to populate and maintain your users and groups within your KnowBe4 Console. - Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
- Access to management interfaces and support channels are restricted by both procedural and technical enforced security including infrastructure restrictions and privileged access management software
- Access restriction testing frequency
- At least once a year
- Management access authentication
-
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
- Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
- Dedicated link (for example VPN)
- Username or password
- Other
- Description of management access authentication
- Management service - OKTA - Fido key
Audit information for users
- Access to user activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- Users contact the support team to get audit information
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- How long system logs are stored for
- At least 12 months
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- Yes
- Security governance certified
- Yes
- Security governance standards
-
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Other
- Other security governance standards
- Our certifications and information regarding which standards are followed can be found here: https://www.knowbe4.com/legal/security
- Information security policies and processes
- KnowBe4 has a comprehensive set of security policies in place, all of which are subject to periodic external evaluation by auditors. For further details, please refer to KnowBe4's due diligence package, which includes the table of contents for the relevant policies and procedures.
- Software Security Code of Practice
- Yes
Operational security
- Configuration and change management standard
- Supplier-defined controls
- Configuration and change management approach
- KnowBe4’s change management process assures security checks and peer reviews are in place for all code changes made to the KSAT production environment. KnowBe4’s infrastructure is managed by code. All security changes go through SAST and dependency checks prior to being deployed. All major changes undergo a security and privacy assessment throughout the life cycle as early as the initial planning stages.
- Vulnerability management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Vulnerability management approach
-
The KnowBe4 information security team performs web application vulnerability scans monthly. These scans are configured to run as authenticated scans. KnowBe4 also conducts internal penetration testing periodically and currently participates in a private bug bounty program where vetted researchers conduct ongoing penetration testing of our applications and infrastructure.
All vulnerabilities discovered from scans or penetration testing are added to a tracker where they are verified, categorized, and evaluated for actual risk.
Vulnerabilities are remediated based on KnowBe4's remediation timeline, please refer to - https://www.knowbe4.com/security - Protective monitoring type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Protective monitoring approach
- KnowBe4 leverages a SIEM to monitor events. The production environment leverages Amazon AWS, WAF, CloudFront, GuardDuty, Shield, VPCs, IAM, Security Groups, and other controls. Changes to the environment are logged and monitored. All changes are required to go through KnowBe4's change management process. Vulnerabilities are remediated in accordance with the schedule listed here: https://www.knowbe4.com/security
- Incident management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Incident management approach
- Incident management is defined in the Information Security Program & further detailed in the Security Incident Response Plan which includes: roles, communication, incident categories, testing along with procedural processes for preparation, identification, containment, remediation, investigation, follow-up/ Lessons Learned, and Notifications. KnowBe4 will notify customers within 72hrs of confirmation of breach affecting customer's data by email. For any outages please reference: https://status.knowbe4.com/
- Post-quantum cryptography secure
- Yes
Secure development
- Approach to secure software development best practice
- Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v4.0)
Public sector networks
- Connection to public sector networks
- No
Pricing
- Discount for educational organisations
- No
- Free trial available
- No
Discount percentage by annual call-off contract value (excluding VAT)
- Less than £250,000
- 5%
- Between £250,000 and £500,000
- 5%
- Between £500,001 and £1,000,000
- 5%
- Between £1,000,001 and £2,500,000
- 5%
- Between £2,500,001 and £5,000,000
- 5%
- Over £5,000,001
- 5%
Non-mandatory Standards and certifications
- ISO/IEC 27001 certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
- Citation ISO Certification Ltd
- ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
- Wednesday 5 March 2025
- What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
- N/A
- ISO 28000:2022 certification
- No
- ISO 9001 certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the ISO 9001 certification
- Peers Quality Assurance Ltd
- ISO 9001 accreditation date
- Wednesday 1 November 2023
- What the ISO 9001 doesn’t cover
- N/A
- Quality management systems (QMS)
- Yes
- CSA STAR certification
- No
- PCI certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
- SecurityMetrics
- PCI DSS accreditation date
- Thursday 23 October 2025
- What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
- N/A
- Cyber essentials
- Yes
- Please provide your Cyber Essentials Certificate Number
- 3990f676-b304-42c4-9776-0869f2d32229
- Cyber essentials plus
- Yes
- Please provide your Cyber Essentials Plus Certificate Number
- 21e94cf4-cda7-4d3a-8343-71e6363aef69
- Other security certifications
- Yes
- Any other security certifications
- IASME Cyber Assurance L2
Social value
- Section B - Commitment for Future: Delivery
-
-
Mission: Kick start economic growth. To secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 - with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country making everyone, not just a few, better off.
Policy Outcome 1: Fair work: That offers fair wages and good working conditions. Help people get a job, stay in work, and progress in their careers, with good employment opportunities across the country. Notes: Where there is a large proportion of labour costs in the contract, commercial teams should consider MAC in Outcome 1 as a priority
- New or retained jobs on the contract workforce in the relevant area that meet the criteria set out in MAC 1b, 1c and 1d
- New apprenticeships on the contract workforce in the relevant area that meet the criteria set out in MAC 1b
- Providing opportunities for, and measuring and monitoring of, staff workforce conditions over time, including employee engagement, involvement in decision-making and satisfaction and adapting to any changes in the results, with clear processes for acting on issues identified
- Plans to engage the contract workforce in deciding the most important workplace issues to address
- Monitoring of employee engagement rates (by protected characteristic) and, where necessary, the development of actions to ensure all voices are heard across the diversity of the workforce
- Payment of more than the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage (as appropriate) to the contract workforce
- Monitoring and reporting of gender and ethnicity pay gaps and plans to address them where necessary
- Understanding of in-work progression issues affecting the market, industry or sector relevant to the contract, and in the supplier’s own organisation and those of its key sub-contractors
- Measures to support in-work progression to help people in the contract workforce, to move into higher paid work by developing new skills relevant to the contract
- Support for educational attainment relevant to the contract, including training schemes that address skills gaps and result in recognised qualifications
- Volunteering opportunities for staff
- Understanding of the modern slavery risks and issues affecting the market, industry, sector or country (of origin or of source) relevant to the contract, and the workforce in the supplier’s own organisation and those of its key subcontractors
-
Mission: Kick start economic growth. To secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 - with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country making everyone, not just a few, better off.
Policy Outcome 2: Skills for growth: Supporting growth sectors and addressing skills gaps.
- Understanding of employment and relevant skills issues, and of the education and training issues relating to the contract. Illustrative examples: demographics, skills shortages, new opportunities in high growth sectors, geographic/local community and skills/employment challenges
-
Mission: Kick start economic growth. To secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 - with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country making everyone, not just a few, better off.
Policy Outcome 3: Resilient, innovative and flexible supply chains: Support economic growth through enabling resilient businesses, opportunities for small businesses and voluntary, community and social enterprises
- Understanding of the types of businesses in the market and the level of participation by new businesses, entrepreneurs, start-ups, SMEs, VCSEs and mutuals
-
Mission: Make Britain a clean energy superpower: To cut bills, create jobs and deliver security with cheaper, zero-carbon electricity by 2030, accelerating to net zero
Policy Outcome 4: Sustainable procurement practices: Reducing carbon footprints, minimising waste, and promoting the use of clean energy and green technologies.
- Understanding of opportunities for additional environmental benefits delivery in the performance of the contract, including working towards net zero carbon emissions and use of clean energy and green technologies
- Delivery of additional environmental benefits through the performance of the contract, including working towards net zero carbon emissions and use of clean energy and green technologies
- Understanding of how to influence staff, suppliers, customers, communities and/or any other appropriate stakeholders through the delivery of the contract to support climate and nature protection and improvement
-
Mission: Break down barriers to opportunity: By reforming our childcare and education systems, to make sure there is no class ceiling on the ambitions of young people in Britain
Policy Outcome 6: Employment and training: For those who face barriers to employment
- Understanding of employment and skills issues, and of the skills and employment shortages of high growth sectors relating to the contract
- Understanding of the issues affecting the representation of disabled people in the workforce in the market, industry or sector relevant to the contract, and in the supplier’s own organisation and those of its key sub-contractors
- Inclusive and accessible development practices, including guidance for line managers on recruiting, managing and developing people with a disability or health condition
-
Mission: Break down barriers to opportunity: By reforming our childcare and education systems, to make sure there is no class ceiling on the ambitions of young people in Britain
Policy Outcome 7: Creating a pipeline of opportunities: For the contract workforce, reducing barriers to entry for under-represented groups.
- Understanding of the issues affecting the development of new skills by target cohort
- Understanding of issues relating to entering the contract workforce
-
Mission: Build an NHS fit for the future: That is there when people need it; with fewer lives lost to the biggest killers; in a fairer Britain, where everyone lives well for longer.
Policy Outcome 8: Increasing productivity through physical and mental wellbeing: In the supply chain and communities in the relevant area.
- Understanding of issues relating to health and wellbeing, including physical and mental health, in the contract workforce
- Understanding barriers to access to health and social care services or employment opportunities e.g. digital inclusion
- Inclusive and accessible recruitment practices, development practices and retention policies that support-focused activities including those provided in the Guide for line managers on recruiting, managing and developing which support people with a disability or health condition
- Actions to invest in the physical and mental health and wellbeing of the contract workforce
-