"With Frame, what we've been able to do is, within moments, create relevant, real-time deep fakes of our leadership and of the actual attack vectors that we were seeing come in and that we were either blocking or capturing or quarantining in some of our other solutions."
Introduction
For Exela Pharma Sciences, a biosciences manufacturer whose ingredients go into medications and injectable vaccines used around the world, security awareness couldn't stay stuck in a compliance checkbox. With employees and operations expanding across North America, Exela needed a program that matched the sophistication of the threats its frontline staff actually face, and the regulatory reality of operating in a pharmaceutical manufacturing environment.
The Challenge
Exela's security team identified several limitations in its legacy awareness program:
- Compliance-Driven, Not Risk-Driven: The program was built around checking a framework's boxes rather than reducing real risk, delivered annually, mandatory, and increasingly stale.
- Industry Nuance: As a pharmaceutical manufacturer, Exela operates under FDA compliance initiatives that standard awareness frameworks simply don't account for, and the previous platform couldn't adapt content to fit.
- Vendor Lag: Exela's prior provider wasn't keeping pace with current attack vectors, specifically deepfakes, and building custom content took too long to be useful.
"Back in the old days, our security awareness program was very compliance driven. It was delivered annually, it wasn't delivered in a very innovative way, and it was mandatory. The program itself started to become stale."
Why Frame
Exela chose Frame for its ability to move at the speed of a modern threat landscape, and to speak directly to a frontline workforce.
- Role-Based Precision: Frame customizes training to exactly what each employee needs, based on their role, function, and job title, delivered bite-sized and built to actually engage.
- Real Attack Vectors, in Real Time: Frame generates relevant, current deepfakes of Exela's own leadership and the actual attack vectors the security team is seeing come through their other tools, not generic simulations.
- Built for Speed: What used to take months or weeks to develop externally, Frame's team deploys in a matter of hours.
"With Frame, what we've been able to do is, within moments, create relevant, real-time deepfakes of our leadership and of the actual attack vectors that we were seeing come in and that we were either blocking, capturing, or quarantining in some of our other solutions."
The Results
With Frame, Exela reinvigorated its awareness program from the ground up:
- A More Engaged Workforce: Frontline associates, from customer service to partner-facing teams, now receive training built for their specific exposure to risk.
- Reduced Human Risk: Employees across every function, from customer service to partner-facing roles, are now hyper-vigilant and better equipped to recognize impersonation and deepfake attempts as part of their daily work, rather than treating security as a once-a-year exercise.
- Deepfake-Ready Training: Exela can convert real attack attempts into training content almost as fast as its security tools catch them.
- A Shift From Reactive to Proactive: Exela is now positioned to get ahead of threats targeting its industry and peer organizations, rather than responding after the fact.
"What we're really looking forward to is being able to push and adapt our program to be much more proactive rather than reactive, which is the way that we've been, and to do some great benchmarking of how we've moved the needle on the awareness of our associates and our business partners."
The Verdict
For Exela, the shift to Frame meant trading a stale, compliance-first program for one that moves as fast as the threats it defends against, matched to the realities of operating in a regulated, global manufacturing environment.
"We've got this new, very upfront, very cutting-edge technology that's in a space that you might have been ignoring for a long time."
