When a Phishing Simulation Becomes a Trap: The New York Knicks Case

Imagine working for a sports organization for years and finally celebrating a historic achievement. After more than five decades without an NBA championship, your team wins the title, and you receive an email announcing that you’ll get a commemorative championship ring in recognition of the victory. Sounds like great news, doesn’t it?

That’s exactly the expectation created among New York Knicks employees in September 2026. The problem? The email wasn’t announcing a reward. It was a phishing simulation organized by the company itself.

The incident drew international attention and reignited an important discussion among cybersecurity professionals: To what extent do phishing simulations actually contribute to employee awareness?

The New York Knicks Case: When a Victory Becomes Bait

In September 2026, employees associated with the New York Knicks received an email informing them that they could choose a complimentary NBA championship ring.

The message presented two design options and invited employees to click a link to select their gift.

However, those who clicked discovered that the offer was part of an internal phishing test. As a result, they were directed to mandatory cybersecurity training.

The initiative faced strong criticism, mainly because the rings represented much more than a gift: they symbolized recognition, belonging, and participation in a historic achievement.

Following the backlash, Madison Square Garden Sports, the organization responsible for the team, acknowledged that using the rings as bait had been a regrettable mistake.

The company explained that the simulation was part of its efforts to strengthen security, particularly after a cyber incident involving an employee’s credentials obtained through phishing.

Although the security concerns were legitimate, the approach raised questions about the ethical boundaries of such initiatives.

After all, can a simulation that creates frustration and damages trust really be considered an effective cybersecurity awareness strategy?

The Problem Isn’t Simulating Attacks, but Turning Employees into Victims

Phishing simulations are tools organizations use to prepare employees to identify and respond to fraudulent messages.

When properly designed, they can recreate realistic situations, highlight warning signs, and provide guidance on how to respond to potential threats.

However, there’s an important difference between replicating the techniques used by cybercriminals and emotionally exploiting employees to trick them into making mistakes.

In the New York Knicks case, the simulation took advantage of employees’ legitimate expectations of professional recognition to capture their attention.

The result was a situation in which the organization itself made a false promise and then required those who believed it to complete additional training.

This approach can have consequences that go beyond temporary dissatisfaction.

When employees begin associating security initiatives with embarrassment, punishment, or tricks, they may become resistant to cybersecurity awareness programs.

Furthermore, trust in internal communications may suffer. After all, if a seemingly legitimate message from the organization itself can be a trap, how can employees distinguish genuine communications from tests?

Cybersecurity awareness should not turn the relationship between employees and security teams into a game of distrust.

As Vinicius Perallis, CEO of Hacker Rangers, points out, organizations need to rethink how they approach cybersecurity awareness initiatives:

“After so many years working in cybersecurity awareness, I still believe we need to move away from a culture built around tricks and punishment toward one focused on learning, positive reinforcement, and real behavioral change.”

This shift in perspective requires organizations to stop treating employees as the weakest link in security and start recognizing them as essential allies in protecting the organization.

From a Culture of Punishment to a Culture of Learning

An effective cybersecurity awareness strategy must recognize that employees are not adversaries of security teams.

On the contrary, they are essential allies in protecting organizational information and systems.

When a simulation is designed solely to identify who made a mistake, an important opportunity for learning is lost.

Instead of focusing on creating increasingly convincing bait, organizations should ask themselves:

• Can employees recognize the main warning signs of phishing?
• Do they know how to verify whether a suspicious message is legitimate?
• Are they familiar with the proper channels for reporting potential threats?
• Do they feel comfortable reporting a mistake without fear of embarrassment?
• Are they demonstrating safer behaviors over time?

These questions help shift the focus toward what truly matters: behavioral change.

This also requires rethinking how feedback is delivered.

An employee who clicks a suspicious link should receive clear, contextualized guidance about the risks involved, without being shamed or publicly singled out for the mistake.

Likewise, positive behaviors, such as recognizing signs of fraud, reporting suspicious messages, and following security procedures, should be acknowledged and encouraged.

After all, a strong security culture develops when people are encouraged to participate, learn, and continuously improve, not when they are afraid of making mistakes.

How Can a Phishing Simulation Become More Educational?

Moving away from punitive approaches doesn’t mean abandoning realistic phishing simulations.

The challenge is finding the right balance between preparing employees for real threats and maintaining a respectful, constructive learning experience.

To achieve this, several practices are essential.

1. Define clear learning objectives

Before launching a campaign, determine which behaviors need to be developed. Is the goal to teach employees to recognize suspicious domains? Identify unusual requests? Encourage the reporting of fraudulent messages?

Simulations should be aligned with these objectives.

2. Avoid exploiting emotionally sensitive situations

Topics involving health issues, layoffs, tragedies, emergencies, or promises of personal recognition require special care.

Although cybercriminals may exploit these situations, that doesn’t mean organizations need to indiscriminately reproduce the same tactics in their training programs.

3. Provide educational, contextualized feedback

When an employee interacts with a simulation, provide guidance explaining which warning signs could indicate a phishing attempt and which actions would have been safer.

The goal should be to encourage reflection and learning, rather than simply informing someone that they failed the test.

4. Encourage threat reporting

Recognizing a suspicious message and reporting it to the appropriate team is an essential behavior for organizational security.

Therefore, campaigns should encourage and facilitate reporting, recognizing employees who contribute to identifying potential attacks.

5. Measure results beyond click rates

Click rates can provide useful information, but they should not be used in isolation to determine employees’ cybersecurity maturity.

Metrics such as reporting rates, recognition of phishing warning signs, behavioral improvements, and participation in educational activities provide a more comprehensive view of program effectiveness.

Building Awareness Means Building Trust, Not Destroying It

The New York Knicks case demonstrates how an initiative intended to strengthen cybersecurity can produce unintended consequences when it fails to consider its impact on people.

The intention to protect the organization against attacks was legitimate. However, using a historic achievement and employees’ expectations of recognition as tools to trick them crossed the boundaries of a healthy educational experience.

The true success of an awareness program isn’t measured by how many people were tricked, but by how many are better prepared to face real threats.

With this perspective in mind, Hacker Rangers developed PhishOS, its phishing simulation solution, which combines realistic experiences with an educational approach to help employees learn how to identify the warning signs of phishing attempts.

Through contextualized feedback, PhishOS helps users understand the warning signs present in simulated messages, turning every interaction into a learning opportunity. It also provides metrics that allow organizations to monitor behavioral improvements and continuously refine their cybersecurity awareness strategies.

Because, more than testing whether someone might fall for a trap, the goal should be to prepare people to recognize and respond to real threats, building a security culture based on learning, collaboration, and trust.