Research and clinical development
Practice external collaboration without exposing participant data, unpublished findings, protocols, compounds, or controlled information.
For Pharmaceutical Companies
Phishing Simulation Planning for Pharmaceutical Companies
Pharmaceutical companies connect research, clinical development, manufacturing, quality, regulatory, supply chain, commercial operations, and external partners across sensitive workflows.
A responsible simulation should practice workforce verification without exposing patient, trial, product, quality, regulatory, or intellectual-property information—or interacting with validated and production systems.
Care-aware planning • Fictional scenarios • Privacy boundaries • Practical reporting
01Understand the setting
Design around how pharmaceutical teams 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.
Manufacturing and quality
Use neutral workforce scenarios outside production, laboratory, batch, deviation, release, and quality-management systems.
Regulatory and safety
Avoid messages that resemble active submissions, inspections, adverse-event reports, recalls, or authority communications.
Supply chain and commercial
Reinforce independent verification for suppliers, logistics, payments, portals, contracts, and shared documents using fictional business data.
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.
Research collaboration
Ask employees to validate an invented researcher, organization, project, access request, and destination.
Supplier document
Practice reaching the known supplier or quality service independently using fictional product and company details.
Conference invitation
Reinforce checking the organizer, event, destination, requested information, and payment route before responding.
Cloud account notice
Ask employees to use the authentic identity or support route rather than an unexpected sign-in page.
03Plan responsibly
Resolve care, privacy, and support questions before launch
| Consideration | Question to answer | Required preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Sensitive information | Could the scenario expose patient, trial, product, research, quality, regulatory, or commercial information? | Use entirely fictional details and obtain the appropriate data-owner and specialist review. |
| System separation | Can any campaign action reach a laboratory, validated, production, quality, safety, or regulatory system? | Use isolated training destinations and prohibit production credentials, integrations, records, and changes. |
| Operational signals | Could the message be mistaken for a deviation, inspection, recall, shortage, safety event, or product issue? | Exclude consequential themes and check active operational events immediately before launch. |
| Global scope | Do region, language, law, works council, support, or partner conditions differ? | Complete applicable review, localize and pilot content, and document conditions for each population. |
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.
Compare like audiences and scenarios, documenting region, language, role, device, partner status, delivery, support, and operational context. Global or function-wide percentages can conceal materially different conditions.
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 pharmaceutical simulation imitate a product recall?
Avoid recall, adverse-event, inspection, shortage, trial-safety, and product-quality themes. They can trigger consequential action and undermine trusted regulated communications.
Can real study or product details be used?
No. Use invented organizations, studies, products, batches, participants, results, and documents. The learning objective should not require sensitive or regulated information.
Should manufacturing and research teams receive the same scenario?
Only when the request, expected action, systems, support, and context genuinely apply to both. Different functions commonly need separate scopes and specialist review.
Does awareness training validate a regulated system?
No. A workforce simulation is not system validation and does not establish product, quality, privacy, security, or regulatory compliance.
Sources & further reading
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