The Ones Who Do Nothing: Ant Cohen on What Your Phishing Metrics Are Missing

On this episode of Cyber Voices, host David Savva-Willett is at the tail end of Canberra CyberConnect 2026, AISA's first ever event in the nation's capital, sitting down with a guest who has one of the best job titles in Australian cyber.Ant Cohen is Head of Security Influence and Trust at nbn. Before cyber, he built some of the most recognisable marketing campaigns this country has seen, from Oprah's Australian adventure to 25 Wallabies campervans touring New Zealand during the Rugby World Cup to a gold medal winning campaign for the Australian Olympic and Paralympic teams in London. He now brings that storytelling firepower to human centred cyber defence, and sits on a NSW Crime Stoppers advisory committee.David and Ant get into why security awareness has a well earned reputation for being boring and occasionally condescending, and Ant's diagnosis of the problem: an oversupply of supply. The industry has indulged in training, drills and metrics reporting without ever building the demand.The idea that stops David in his tracks is the do nothing cohort. Security teams obsess over the people who click and celebrate the people who report, but the largest group by far is the people who open the simulation, leave it sitting in the inbox and take no action at all. Ant explains why the time of day, the device and the out of office setting tell you far more about your culture than a click rate ever will, and why he is a believer in small data over big data.The conversation also covers whether phishing simulations remain tenable after a decade of use, the difference between decisions made cold and decisions made in the heat of the moment, closing the loop so people know a human actually reads what they report, and the scale of nbn's responsibility given the proportion of Australia's daily data traffic that crosses the network. Ant's team of four works alongside nbn Local to reach regional and rural communities, libraries and the Country Women's Association with scams education aimed squarely at the Australians most often targeted.And his one thing for cyber leaders heading back to work on Monday: learn your audience, and learn the language they actually speak.Recorded live at Canberra CyberConnect 2026.