When utilizing technical assessment methods to assess the security posture of a network, which of the following techniques would be most effective in determining whether end-user security training wou

Vulnerability scanning identifies technical weaknesses in systems and software configurations, providing no insight into human behavior or susceptibility to social manipulation.

Social engineering techniques such as phishing simulations, pretexting, and baiting directly test whether users can recognize and resist manipulation attempts rather than identifying technical vulnerabilities. If users fall for simulated attacks, it demonstrates measurable gaps in security awareness that targeted training can remediate. No other listed technical assessment method can directly evaluate human behavioral risk, which is precisely what security awareness training is designed to reduce.

Application security testing evaluates the security of software code and its deployment configuration, which is entirely unrelated to measuring end-user awareness or resilience against social engineering.

Network sniffing captures and analyzes traffic for technical issues such as cleartext credentials or protocol anomalies, and does not assess user decision-making or security awareness.