Branches and offices
Account for customer-facing work, local schedules, shared inboxes, devices, and access to central support.
For Multi-Location Businesses
Phishing Simulation Planning for Multi-Location Businesses
Multi-location businesses rely on central services and local teams working across branches, stores, offices, plants, warehouses, and franchise or partner environments.
A useful simulation should account for local devices, staffing, schedules, ownership, and support instead of treating every site as an identical audience.
Enterprise governance • Role-based scenarios • Controlled delivery • Contextual reporting
01Map the enterprise
Design around how multi-location businesses actually operate
Start with the entities, roles, systems, decision rights, and support teams involved in the selected workflow. Enterprise scale makes ownership and local conditions as important as message content.
Operational sites
Keep exercises separate from production, safety, warehouse, facility, and operational-control systems.
Franchises and partners
Confirm authority, employer responsibilities, technology ownership, support, data access, and follow-up before inclusion.
Central shared services
Map how HR, finance, procurement, IT, and security requests reach sites and how local employees verify them.
02Choose the scenario
Use a role-specific request with a controlled response
Give every scenario one observable learning objective. Use fictional people, organizations, transactions, systems, and incidents, and keep the campaign outside production and privileged environments.
Central policy document
Practice validating an invented owner, business context, permissions request, and destination.
Local supplier invoice
Reinforce the established callback and approval process using a fictional vendor and transaction.
Account or device notice
Ask employees to contact the known central support route rather than following an unexpected link.
Manager request
Practice independently confirming an unusual payment, access, or sensitive-document request.
03Govern the campaign
Resolve ownership, authority, and data questions before launch
| Consideration | Question to answer | Required preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Site comparability | Do locations share the workflow, device access, reporting route, and operational conditions? | Create site groups and separate campaigns when the expected behavior differs materially. |
| Local timing | Does delivery overlap opening, closing, peak trade, shifts, inventory, maintenance, or other critical work? | Choose supported windows and give local operations a documented stop route. |
| Shared technology | Can activity from shared devices and mailboxes be attributed reliably? | Treat uncertain events as device or workflow observations rather than individual actions. |
| Ownership | Are any locations franchised, contracted, acquired, or supported by another organization? | Resolve authority, notice, systems, data, reporting, and response responsibilities first. |
04Run the exercise
Coordinate one enterprise workflow end to end
- 1
Write the campaign brief
Define the behavior, authorized audience, exclusions, scenario, permitted data, delivery windows, owners, reporting route, stop conditions, and intended use of results.
- 2
Confirm decision rights
Map central and local approvals, system and data owners, response teams, providers, and the real verification or escalation process employees should use.
- 3
Pilot representative environments
Test entities, locations, roles, devices, languages, email controls, landing pages, event records, reports, and follow-up material included in scope.
- 4
Brief response teams
Prepare security, privacy, legal, communications, HR, operations, local support, and relevant providers while preserving normal handling of real incidents.
- 5
Debrief and assign owners
Explain the expected action, provide relevant private learning, and record every process or control improvement with a responsible owner and review date.
Source: NIST SP 800-50 Rev. 1: Building a Cybersecurity and Privacy Learning Program
05Measure responsibly
Report enterprise results without hiding local conditions
Record intended recipients, exclusions, successful deliveries, unique recipient events, verified reports, response handling, and completed follow-up. Reconcile automated inspection and repeated events before attributing activity to employees.
Show site and recipient counts and document site type, role, shift, device, shared access, delivery, scenario relevance, and reporting support. Avoid league tables where conditions or small group sizes differ.
Use findings to improve real verification, reporting, identity, access, email, provider, and support processes. One interaction is not an employee risk score, and an enterprise-wide percentage does not establish program effectiveness.
Common questions
Common questions about Phishmake's features, onboarding, and support, answered to help you get started with confidence.
Should every location receive the same scenario?
Only when the same request, expected action, device access, support, and operating context apply. Otherwise, use separate scopes for comparable site groups.
Can franchises join a corporate campaign?
Only with explicit authority and agreement on employer responsibilities, policy, notice, technology, data access, support, result visibility, and follow-up.
How should shared mailbox events be measured?
Treat them as mailbox or workflow observations unless reliable individual attribution exists. Do not infer which employee acted from a shared event alone.
Should locations be ranked by click rate?
No. Audience size, role, schedule, device, delivery, scenario relevance, and support differ. Use contextual results to improve shared and local processes.
Sources & further reading
Published by Phishmake · Updated
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