Front desk
Account for phones, patients, scheduling, payments, shared inboxes, and limited time to investigate an unexpected message.
For Dental Practices
Phishing Simulation Planning for Dental Practices
Dental practices combine patient scheduling and records with insurance, laboratories, imaging, suppliers, payment services, payroll, and outsourced technology support.
A manageable simulation should practice one relevant verification step without using patient details or disrupting chairside care and front-desk operations.
Care-aware planning • Fictional scenarios • Privacy boundaries • Practical reporting
01Understand the setting
Design around how dental practices actually work
Start with the workforce, systems, and verification routes involved in the selected workflow. The exercise must remain secondary to patient care, safety, product quality, and real incident response.
Clinical staff
Use a routine workforce scenario that cannot be confused with an image, treatment plan, prescription, or urgent patient instruction.
Insurance and billing
Practice verifying fictional payer, attachment, payment, and account-change requests through the established process.
Laboratories and suppliers
Use invented organizations and files when reinforcing known portal, callback, order, and delivery routes.
02Choose the scenario
Use a recognizable request with a safe response
Give the scenario one learning objective and one explainable next step. Use fictional people and records, and avoid urgent clinical, patient, safety, recall, or public-health themes.
Laboratory file notice
Practice reaching the known laboratory service independently using a fictional case with no patient or treatment information.
Supplier invoice
Ask staff to validate an invented invoice and vendor through the normal purchasing process.
Insurance attachment
Reinforce checking sender, expected context, and destination before opening a fictional administrative document.
Account renewal
Practice contacting the known IT provider or opening the normal service instead of using an unexpected renewal link.
03Plan responsibly
Resolve care, privacy, and support questions before launch
| Consideration | Question to answer | Required preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Patient information | Could the message or landing page reveal a patient, treatment, image, appointment, or claim? | Use entirely fictional neutral content and keep it outside clinical and practice-management systems. |
| Shared inboxes | Can the practice reliably identify who acted in a shared mailbox or workstation? | Report mailbox or device observations separately when individual attribution is not reliable. |
| Care timing | Could the exercise interrupt chairside care, opening, closing, or a high-volume appointment period? | Choose a quieter window with the practice manager available to pause the campaign. |
| IT support | Who receives a report or real incident when technology support is external? | Test the complete handoff and document primary and backup contacts before launch. |
04Run the exercise
Move from an approved brief to useful follow-up
- 1
Define one behavior
State the request being tested, the expected verification or reporting action, the authorized workforce group, and how observations will be used.
- 2
Protect care and operations
Document exclusions, data boundaries, operational approvers, delivery windows, escalation contacts, and conditions that require the campaign to stop.
- 3
Pilot end to end
Test representative accounts, shifts, devices, accessibility tools, email controls, landing pages, event records, reporting routes, and follow-up material.
- 4
Brief response teams
Prepare security, IT, privacy, clinical or operational leadership, communications, and relevant providers while preserving normal handling of real reports.
- 5
Debrief and improve
Explain the expected action, provide relevant private learning, and assign every workflow or control improvement to a responsible owner.
05Measure responsibly
Interpret activity in workforce and care context
Record intended recipients, exclusions, successful deliveries, unique recipient events, verified reports, response handling, and completed follow-up. Reconcile automated link inspection and repeated events before attributing an action to a person.
Show actual counts beside percentages and document role, shared-device use, delivery, clinical workload, and reporting access. A shared-mailbox event does not establish which employee acted.
Use findings to improve reporting, verification, identity, email, access, vendor, or support processes. A simulation observes a limited interaction; it does not measure clinical competence, overall workforce risk, or regulatory compliance.
Common questions
Common questions about Phishmake's features, onboarding, and support, answered to help you get started with confidence.
Can a dental simulation use a real laboratory case?
No. Use an invented laboratory, case, file, and patient context. Real images, treatment details, case identifiers, and patient information are unnecessary for the learning objective.
How should a shared front-desk inbox be measured?
Treat it as a shared workflow unless reliable individual attribution exists. Use the result to improve mailbox handling and reporting rather than infer individual performance.
Can the IT provider run the campaign?
A provider can support delivery and reporting, but the practice should approve the audience, objective, scenario, data handling, timing, stop conditions, communications, and follow-up.
Does phishing simulation establish HIPAA compliance?
No. A simulation can support a broader awareness program but does not by itself determine or establish compliance with HIPAA or any other legal or regulatory requirement.
Sources & further reading
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