Client service
Practice secure document and portal decisions without imitating a real client, filing issue, notice, or distressed request.
For Accounting Firms
Phishing Simulation Planning for Accounting Firms
Accounting firms exchange client documents, tax records, payroll files, invoices, bank details, and cloud-service invitations—often under seasonal deadline pressure.
A responsible simulation should practice independent verification without copying client records, exploiting tax anxiety, or disrupting a live filing and payment workflow.
Role-specific scenarios • Customer-data boundaries • Reporting practice • Contextual measurement
01Understand the workflow
Design around how accounting and bookkeeping firms actually work
Begin with a decision employees already make and the approved way to verify it. The exercise should support the institution's security program without entering production accounts, payments, customer systems, or regulated records.
Tax and payroll
Use invented records and avoid periods when a scenario could be confused with a consequential filing, deposit, or employee-payment action.
Bookkeeping and payments
Reinforce known callback and approval routes for invoices, wire instructions, supplier details, and account access.
Seasonal and external staff
Confirm onboarding, identity, device, policy, support, and data responsibilities before including temporary personnel.
02Choose the scenario
Use a familiar financial request with a safe response
Give each scenario one learning objective and one explainable next step. Use fictional customers, organizations, accounts, transactions, and documents, and avoid active fraud, hardship, investigation, or market events.
Client document share
Practice validating a fictional client, file owner, engagement context, permissions request, and destination.
Payment instruction
Ask staff to confirm invented bank details through a saved client contact and established approval step.
Tax-software notice
Reinforce opening the known service independently rather than signing in through an unexpected update or expiry link.
Payroll file request
Practice escalating a fictional sensitive-file request without attaching, forwarding, or exposing real employee data.
03Plan responsibly
Resolve authority, data, and response questions before launch
| Consideration | Question to answer | Required preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Client confidentiality | Could the message reveal a client, engagement, filing, payroll, or financial condition? | Use invented names and records and review every message, destination, export, and debrief. |
| Seasonal timing | Does the campaign overlap tax, audit, payroll, month-end, or reporting deadlines? | Choose a lower-pressure period with management and technical support available. |
| Temporary staff | Are seasonal employees covered by policy, training, support, and the approved exercise scope? | Reconcile the audience and provide the real verification process before campaign delivery. |
| Provider coordination | Who manages email, identity, devices, cloud services, and incident response? | Test reporting and escalation with the responsible provider using approved accounts. |
04Run the exercise
Move from an approved brief to controlled follow-up
- 1
Define one behavior
State the request being tested, expected verification or reporting action, authorized audience, permitted data, and intended use of the findings.
- 2
Confirm the real control
Verify that employees can use the documented callback, approval, reporting, identity, or escalation route before asking them to practice it.
- 3
Pilot end to end
Test representative accounts, locations, devices, email controls, landing pages, event records, reports, response handling, and follow-up material.
- 4
Brief responsible teams
Prepare security, fraud, compliance, privacy, IT, operations, communications, and relevant providers while preserving normal handling of real incidents.
- 5
Debrief and improve
Explain the expected action, provide relevant private learning, and assign each process or control improvement to an accountable owner.
05Measure responsibly
Report campaign activity with business context
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 an employee.
Show actual counts beside percentages and note role, employment status, workload, device, delivery, scenario relevance, and reporting access. Seasonal timing can materially change participation and should be recorded.
Use the review to improve reporting, payment verification, identity, email, access, vendor, or support controls. A simulation does not test transaction systems or establish the effectiveness of an institution's entire information security or compliance program.
Common questions
Common questions about Phishmake's features, onboarding, and support, answered to help you get started with confidence.
Can a simulation imitate an IRS or tax-authority notice?
Avoid real or high-distress tax notices, investigations, penalties, refunds, and filing problems. Use a neutral fictional workflow that will not prompt consequential client action.
Should seasonal staff receive simulations?
Only when they are in the approved scope, have received the relevant process, and can access reporting, support, and appropriate follow-up. A simulation should not replace onboarding.
Can real client files make the scenario more realistic?
No. Use invented clients, documents, figures, accounts, and deadlines. Real financial and tax records are unnecessary for practicing verification.
What is a useful first scenario for an accounting firm?
A fictional client document share or vendor bank-detail change provides a clear independent verification action without relying on an urgent tax or payroll event.
Sources & further reading
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