Administrative employees
Practice document, workforce, procurement, and account decisions with fictional agencies and records.
For Government Organizations
Phishing Simulation Planning for Government Employees
Government organizations deliver public services through elected and appointed leadership, administrators, field personnel, contractors, vendors, and shared technology providers.
A useful simulation should reflect those workflows without imitating an emergency alert, public-safety instruction, benefits decision, election event, or active citizen case.
Industry-specific scenarios • Safe campaign boundaries • Reporting practice • Contextual measurement
01Understand the work
Design around how government organizations actually operate
Start with the people, systems, authority, and verification routes involved in one real workflow. The exercise should practice an action employees can take without disrupting customers, operations, safety, or real incident response.
Public-facing services
Avoid scenarios that resemble an active resident case, benefit decision, permit, tax matter, or enforcement action.
Field and public-safety staff
Preserve emergency channels and account for shift, mobile, shared-device, and operational responsibilities.
Contractors and providers
Resolve authorization, employer duties, identity, support, data access, result visibility, and follow-up before inclusion.
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, organizations, records, transactions, and incidents, and avoid exploiting a live problem or sensitive relationship.
Shared policy document
Practice validating an invented owner, department, permissions request, and destination.
Procurement notice
Use a fictional supplier to reinforce the established callback and approval process.
Workforce account alert
Ask employees to reach the authentic HR or identity service independently.
External meeting invitation
Practice checking the organizer, public-service context, platform, and requested access before joining.
03Plan responsibly
Resolve operational questions before launch
| Consideration | Question to answer | Required preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Trusted channels | Could the exercise weaken confidence in emergency, election, public-health, or public-safety messages? | Exclude those themes and preserve established official notification channels. |
| Public records | Could the scenario use citizen, constituent, employee, case, tax, benefit, or law-enforcement information? | Use entirely fictional neutral records and complete privacy and records review. |
| Authority | Are contractors, elected officials, partner agencies, or other jurisdictions included? | Document authority, policy, notice, support, data handling, and follow-up for each population. |
| Operational timing | Does delivery overlap an emergency, election, public meeting, deadline, or service disruption? | Check current conditions before launch and give operations an immediate stop route. |
04Run the exercise
Move from an approved brief to useful 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 process
Make sure employees can reach the authentic service, contact, approver, reporting tool, or escalation route before testing the behavior.
- 3
Pilot end to end
Test representative accounts, locations, shifts, devices, email controls, landing pages, event records, reports, stop conditions, and follow-up.
- 4
Brief response teams
Prepare security, IT, operations, communications, managers, and relevant providers while preserving normal handling of unrelated real reports.
- 5
Debrief and improve
Explain the expected action, provide relevant private learning, and assign every process or control improvement to an accountable owner.
Source: NIST: Building a Cybersecurity and Privacy Learning Program
05Measure responsibly
Interpret campaign activity in 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 employees.
Interpret results with agency, role, location, shift, device, contractor status, delivery, scenario relevance, and reporting access in view. Avoid comparing small offices or agencies with materially different conditions.
Use findings to improve real reporting, verification, identity, access, email, vendor, and support processes. A single interaction does not explain why a decision occurred and should not become an employee risk score.
Common questions
Common questions about Phishmake's features, onboarding, and support, answered to help you get started with confidence.
Can a government simulation imitate an emergency alert?
Avoid emergency, public-safety, election, public-health, law-enforcement, and disaster themes. They can trigger consequential action and undermine trusted official channels.
Should contractors join employee campaigns?
Only after authority, employer responsibilities, notice, policy, support, data access, result visibility, and follow-up are resolved.
Can real constituent or case data be used?
No. Use fictional people, cases, agencies, documents, and identifiers. Real public-service records are unnecessary for practicing verification.
How should agencies compare departments?
Document group size, role, scenario, delivery, device, operating conditions, and support. Avoid rankings when those conditions differ or groups are identifiable.
Sources & further reading
Published by Phishmake · Updated
Keep building your program
All resourcesPut it into practice
Build practical awareness for government employees.
Explore how Phishmake connects controlled employee simulations, relevant training, campaign activity, and follow-up reporting in one workflow.