Accounts payable
Practice invoice and bank-detail verification through saved supplier contacts and established authorization steps.
For Corporate Finance Teams
Phishing Simulation Planning for Corporate Finance Teams
Corporate finance teams handle invoices, treasury, payroll, expenses, banking relationships, procurement handoffs, reporting, and executive approvals.
A useful simulation should exercise the controls around those decisions without initiating a real payment, changing vendor data, or using confidential financial information.
Role-specific scenarios • Customer-data boundaries • Reporting practice • Contextual measurement
01Understand the workflow
Design around how corporate finance teams 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.
Treasury
Use fictional payment, banking, and liquidity requests outside live portals and transaction processes.
Payroll and expenses
Reinforce identity and approval routes for direct-deposit, tax, reimbursement, and employee-data requests.
Controllers and executives
Practice escalation of unusual urgent requests even when a message appears to come from a senior leader.
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.
Vendor bank change
Ask employees to perform the documented callback and approval process for an invented supplier.
Executive wire request
Practice pausing and independently confirming an urgent fictional transfer through the established authority chain.
Payroll update
Reinforce validating identity and using the normal workforce system for a fictional direct-deposit request.
Shared financial report
Ask employees to inspect the sender, reporting context, permissions, and destination using an invented document.
03Plan responsibly
Resolve authority, data, and response questions before launch
| Consideration | Question to answer | Required preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Control objective | Which callback, approval, segregation, identity, or escalation step should employees perform? | Map the real control, owner, evidence, and fallback before designing the message. |
| Transaction separation | Could any campaign action create or change a payment, vendor, bank, payroll, or accounting record? | Use isolated training destinations and fictional data with no production integrations. |
| Financial calendar | Does the window overlap payroll, close, reporting, audit, tax, or major transaction deadlines? | Choose a supported lower-pressure period and define finance-owned stop conditions. |
| Incident routing | Will reports reach security, fraud, finance, or the correct combination? | Test acknowledgment, escalation, evidence preservation, and ownership before launch. |
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.
Review whether employees used the intended control and whether the control was available, clear, and timely. Record role, authority, scenario, deadline pressure, delivery, reports, and response handling alongside interaction counts.
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 ask an employee to initiate a test payment?
No. Keep the exercise outside transaction systems and never create a payment, alter vendor or bank records, or ask employees to bypass financial controls.
Should executives know about the campaign?
The authorized sponsor and relevant control owners should approve the scope. Decide disclosure and operational roles through policy while ensuring impersonated names and scenarios are authorized and safe.
Is click rate useful for finance teams?
It is only one limited observation. Review use of the expected verification control, reports, delivery, scanner activity, scenario context, response handling, and resulting process improvements.
What should happen when a control fails?
Stop any unsafe activity, debrief privately, determine whether the process was unclear or unavailable, and assign the approval, callback, identity, access, or training improvement to an owner.
Sources & further reading
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