What is Spear Phishing?

Imagine you’re at war back in the early 1900s. Back then, spears were a widely used, weapon of choice for foot soldiers, apart from swords, of course. But an interesting distinction is, that while you could slash many enemies with a sword, you could, at best, harm only one person with a spear at one time. In the world of cybersecurity, there’s also a particular attack that follows this principle - spear phishing.

We all know what phishing means, and generic phishing emails are usually sent to large groups at once. Spear phishing is the opposite – it’s a targeted phishing attack aimed at a specific person, team, or organization, and such phishing messages are carefully customized to look relevant, familiar, so that they win your trust.

The goal of spear phishing is usually to steal login credentials, access confidential data, install malware, commit financial fraud, or compromise business systems. But how do attackers do this? They typically pose as someone important from your organization. This could be a manager, a vendor, an important customer, a member of your HR team, finance department, or even IT support. They may talk about actual projects, jobs / job roles, invoices, meetings, or business processes.

Now that you know all this, what do you watch out for? Simple - anything that feels 'off'. This could be an unexpected attachment, an email asking for urgent payments, a request to bypass set processes, slight changes in in their email addresses, or even an unusual tone you’ve never seen in previous emails.  

Your organization can reduce the risks of spear phishing by ramping up email security, multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection, user awareness training, domain protection, and advanced anti phishing techniques. Employees should also verify sensitive requests through a trusted channel before taking action.