Branch network
Account for local staffing, customer traffic, devices, reporting access, and regional operating schedules.
For Regional Banks
Phishing Simulation Planning for Regional Banks
Regional banks operate across branches, business lines, contact centers, corporate functions, technology platforms, subsidiaries, and third-party providers.
A useful simulation program should segment those environments, preserve fraud and incident-response capacity, and compare only campaigns with genuinely similar conditions.
Role-specific scenarios • Customer-data boundaries • Reporting practice • Contextual measurement
01Understand the workflow
Design around how regional-bank 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.
Contact centers
Practice identity and escalation decisions without imitating a live account takeover, fraud alert, or distressed customer.
Business and commercial banking
Use invented clients, payments, documents, and approvals for treasury, lending, and relationship workflows.
Technology and privileged teams
Use a separately authorized scope aligned with administrative identity, change, vendor, and incident procedures.
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.
Treasury-service document
Practice validating an invented client, sender, permissions request, and destination before opening a file.
Vendor access notice
Ask employees to reach the known provider service independently rather than following an unexpected link.
Payment-detail update
Reinforce established callback, segregation-of-duties, and approval processes with a fictional transaction.
Benefits or payroll request
Practice opening the authentic workforce service instead of signing in through an unsolicited notice.
03Plan responsibly
Resolve authority, data, and response questions before launch
| Consideration | Question to answer | Required preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Business-line scope | Does the expected action apply consistently across every included line, location, and subsidiary? | Define audience, exclusions, ownership, and local variations before selecting recipients. |
| Fraud operations | Could the exercise be confused with active fraud monitoring or consume response capacity? | Brief fraud and security teams and stop during material fraud or cyber events. |
| Delivery controls | Will email security, link inspection, or regional configuration change the message experience? | Pilot representative environments and reconcile automated activity before launch. |
| Comparison rules | Are audiences, scenarios, timing, delivery, and support similar enough to compare? | Document denominators and conditions and avoid rankings when material differences remain. |
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.
Interpret results with business line, location, shift, role, device, scenario, delivery, scanner activity, prior guidance, and reporting access in view. An enterprise average can hide important operational differences.
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 regional banks compare branch click rates?
Branch comparisons can mislead when audience size, traffic, devices, scenarios, delivery, and support differ. Use contextual aggregate results to improve common processes rather than rank branches.
Should contact-center employees receive account-fraud scenarios?
Avoid themes that could be mistaken for an active fraud event or customer emergency. Choose a routine fictional workflow and preserve normal escalation for real cases.
How should privileged users be tested?
Use a separately authorized campaign aligned with administrative procedures. Never request real credentials or connect the exercise to identity, management, transaction, or production systems.
What belongs in executive reporting?
Include audience and delivery counts, unique events, verified reports, response handling, scenario context, limitations, follow-up, and assigned process or control improvements.
Sources & further reading
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