Power BI Cybersecurity Reporting Platform Modernization

A global manufacturer of industrial equipment operates across multiple regions worldwide, with a significant presence in the United States. As a large, internationally distributed organization, the company's internal security team carries the responsibility of monitoring and communicating cybersecurity risks across a complex, multi-region workforce — a function that depends heavily on timely, accurate data.

The security team had established clear goals around automating their reporting processes and making security data more accessible and actionable. They saw an opportunity to move from a manual consolidation process toward a dynamic, real-time reporting environment. Key metrics including phishing simulation results, employee training completion, and vulnerability exposure were being drawn from multiple source systems, and bringing those sources together into an interactive, filterable platform would give the team faster access to the insights they needed to act on emerging risks.

As the company's security program matured and its ambitions grew, so did the opportunity to streamline how security insights were gathered and shared. Automating the reporting process would free the security team to focus more time on remediation and risk response. Giving managers direct, on-demand visibility into their team's performance and building in recognition for employees contributing to security awareness would strengthen the program further. The case for a modern, purpose-built reporting platform was compelling.

The company connected with Emergent Software to design and build a modern, automated reporting solution. The goal was to replace the manual workflow with a centralized platform that could deliver near-real-time security insights to stakeholders across the organization.

Emergent Software began the engagement with a structured discovery phase built directly into the project scope. The Emergent team conducted in-depth interviews with the client staff responsible for the existing reporting process, reviewing current assets and workflows to fully understand what data existed, where it lived, and what the security team ultimately needed to see. That assessment became the foundation for scoping the build, ensuring the solution was designed around actual business requirements.

The primary deliverable identified through discovery was a cybersecurity awareness dashboard. To build it, Emergent architected a data mart using Azure Data Factory pipelines to ingest and consolidate data from multiple source systems. Employee information was pulled from Employee Central, phishing simulation campaign data and real-time phishing reports were sourced from KnowBe4, and cybersecurity training completion records were integrated from SAP. Because the data involved sensitive security information, the SQL database serving as the platform's backend was hosted on-premises on a virtual machine to meet the client's internal security requirements. Power BI was deployed as the reporting front end, connecting to that data layer to surface dynamic, interactive dashboards. 

Throughout the build, Emergent used AI-assisted prototyping to give client stakeholders an early, tangible preview of the dashboard direction before development was complete. This allowed the team to validate the design approach and gather feedback early, reducing the risk of rework and building confidence in the final product.

The completed dashboard delivered several interconnected views of security program performance. An organizational overview showed phishing simulation pass rates by month, with the ability to break results down by senior manager, giving leadership a clear picture of which areas of the business warranted attention. Managers could drill into team-level and individual-level performance for their direct reports, view training completion status, and see whether employees had reported suspicious emails. A phishing intelligence view surfaced campaign-level statistics across the organization's multilingual, international workforce. The platform also included a Hero Leaderboard recognizing employees who excelled at identifying and reporting phishing attempts, framing security awareness as something to celebrate alongside areas for improvement. A self-service data export capability and a centralized resources page rounded out the experience.

The client's security team now operates with a level of data visibility and operational efficiency that was not achievable under their previous approach. The cybersecurity awareness dashboard replaced at least three distinct manual processes: compiling and distributing consolidated security reports, notifying managers of repeat phishing failures, and communicating positive performance outcomes to the organization each month. Work that previously required significant manual effort is now automated and available in near real time.

The shift to a fully interactive Power BI platform fundamentally changed how security data is consumed across the organization. Managers can now independently access their team's performance without requesting a custom data pull. Trends and patterns that previously required combining data across multiple reporting periods are now immediately visible. The ability to drill from organizational summaries down to individual employee records gives the security team the granularity needed to act quickly on emerging risks and support targeted coaching conversations.

The platform also introduced a new dimension to how the organization approaches security culture. By surfacing the Hero Leaderboard alongside awareness metrics, the dashboard reinforces positive security behaviors and gives the team a constructive way to recognize employees who actively contribute to the organization's resilience.

Client reception to the solution was strong. Stakeholders responded positively throughout the prototyping and delivery process, and the relationship has continued to grow since the initial engagement. The client has committed to additional work with Emergent, including a vulnerability management dashboard currently in development. The cybersecurity awareness platform has established a strong foundation for expanding the client's data-driven security program, with the architecture in place to support new data sources and reporting use cases as the program evolves.