Social Engineering Assessment Services

Trava delivers a technical report and walks your team through campaign results, individual findings, and recommendations organized by finding type (behavioral versus procedural). From there, most organizations either address specific training gaps independently or engage Trava's Managed Security Awareness Training (MSAT) service for an ongoing program that delivers monthly training, regular phishing simulations, and measurable susceptibility reduction over time.

Scope is defined collaboratively before any activity begins. Trava works with your team to identify the target population, acceptable techniques, excluded scenarios, and rules of engagement, all agreed in writing. No activity occurs outside the agreed scope.

SOC 2 (CC1.4) requires organizations to demonstrate competence and commitment to security through workforce training and awareness programs. ISO 27001 (Annex A, 6.3) explicitly requires awareness, education, and training, and identifies phishing and social engineering as required training topics. HIPAA (164.308(a)(5)) requires a security awareness and training program for all workforce members with access to ePHI, with phishing recognition as a core topic.

None of these frameworks explicitly mandate social engineering testing, but a Trava assessment produces documented evidence that your organization has evaluated and is actively managing human-layer risk, which directly supports the intent of all three and gives auditors something concrete to point to.

In most engagements, employees are not informed in advance; that's what makes the results meaningful. Leadership and designated stakeholders are briefed before the engagement begins. Trava designs scenarios to be realistic but not harmful: no credentials are actually compromised for malicious usage, no systems are accessed, and no individuals are targeted in a way that could cause personal harm. Many organizations use the debrief and results as a direct teaching moment with their teams.

Both are built on the same pretexting foundation: reconnaissance into your organization's people, roles, and processes to make scenarios feel real. The difference is vector. A spear phishing assessment tests email-based social engineering: whether employees click, submit credentials, or report the attempt. A vishing assessment tests voice-based social engineering: whether employees will disclose sensitive information or take a risky action when a practitioner calls posing as a vendor, IT contact, or executive. Both can be scoped as standalone engagements or combined.

Phishing simulations (like those in Trava's Managed Security Awareness Training program) measure and improve employee behavior over time through regular, ongoing testing. A spear phishing assessment serves a different purpose: it's a point-in-time evaluation built from pretexting, using scenarios crafted around your specific email environment, internal terminology, and highest-risk roles.

The two work well together. Simulations track susceptibility trends and build awareness muscle across your workforce. An assessment tells you where the specific gaps are and whether they're behavioral or procedural, giving your awareness program something concrete to act on.