What is Spear Phishing?
Spear phishing emails are disguised as trusted communications, designed to fool people into taking action such as giving up their user credentials or opening an attachment.
Unlike general phishing, which casts a wide net, spear phishing is more focused and often involves detailed information about the victim, such as their job role or personal interests.
There are also other more targeted attacks and fraudulent techniques beyond spear phishing, including whaling and executive impersonation.
Why Spear Phishing Prevention Is Important
Spear phishing attacks often look and feel like a legitimate message, but are designed to steal company information, fraudulently wire money, or even encrypt company assets and hold them hostage. Thus, they are easy to "believe" and can easily bypass legacy email security controls. And that's why, according to a December 2024 StationX blog post, spear phishing campaigns were responsible for 66% of all breaches this year.
The malicious payloads in phishing emails – hidden inside of innocuous-looking links, or legitimate file attachments like PDFs or Microsoft Word files – either redirect to a malicious site where a desktop gets infected, or more commonly to a fake cloned webpage that looks nearly identical to the real thing. When a user enters their information to login on this fake site, attackers can steal those credentials and then use them on the real platform.
4 Common Spear Phishing Warning Signs
Each email looks different, but there are some common tactics to look out for:
The sender domain is (even slightly) different than the legitimate one.
Often includes attachments or links that don't match the expected source.
The message urges you to take immediate action.
May include personalized information that seems oddly specific or irrelevant.
What Does Spear Phishing Involve? The Anatomy of an Attack
Why is email the #1 attack vector for cyberattacks?
IBM continues to identify phishing as the leading initial email attack vector, most recently responsible for 41% of security incidents. And according to the 2024 DBIR report, Verizon puts pretexting – or the act of creating fake scenarios to trick recipients into sharing sensitive information – at the top of incident classification patterns responsible,, along with phishing, for 73% of data breaches.
In this vein, a common technique used in spear phishing campaigns is the Phishing Kill Chain, which is comprised of the following phases:
PHASE 1: Research
Identify Targets
Cybercriminals leverage data from corporate breaches, a target's own website, LinkedIn or other social media sites to build their target list.
PHASE 2: Develop
Prepare Attack
Prior to launching the email attack, cybercriminals develop their payloads including building fake websites of reputable brands or organizations to fool their victims.
PHASE 3: Deceive
Distribute Emails
Emails touting urgency—"Security Alert," a tax-time request for employee W-2s, etc.—are delivered. Attacks are personalized, low volume, and targeted so they're unlikely to be detected.
PHASE 4: Retrieve
Reap Rewards
Once the requested action is taken, usually involving clicking a phishing link or opening the attachment, criminals can login to the victim's account or access their system to steal confidential information.
How to Prevent Spear Phishing
While spear phishing is a highly effective attack method, there are things organizations can do to help prevent the attacks from causing damage. Best practices for prevention include:
Processes
Develop clear protocols for verifying sensitive requests like financial transactions.
Technology
Leverage email security solutions that identify advanced attacks and authenticate emails.
Top 3 Spear Phishing Prevention Techniques
Let's dive into the most effective ways to defend against spear phishing through user training,
automated processes, and advanced technologies:
Educate:
Implementing an educational phishing campaign program across an organization can help drastically reduce the number of phishing emails opened. This helps staff identify and report phishing emails and works as a first line of defense when other security measures are in place.
Authenticate:
Two-factor authentication (2FA) provides an extra layer of protection that combines login credentials with something physical such as a smartphone or authenticator app. Even if a phishing email is opened and credentials are entered into it, the attacker will not be able to access the site if 2FA is enabled.
Designate (where emails originate from):
Email server rules can be configured to label emails with a warning stating it came from outside of the company. This helps staff easily identify phishing attempts, even when well crafted.
Fortra Solutions for Spear Phishing Attack Prevention
Growing Smarter Every Day
It’s not enough to react and detect spear phishing attacks, but to prevent and deter them before they strike. Fortra Email Security solutions predict attacks based on understanding the identity and relationships behind the message and on how closely a new message correlates or deviates from known patterns of good email communication.
Even though your business may not have seen a threat, Fortra likely has – it's already at work protecting organizations worldwide.
Cloud Email Security
Stop sophisticated identity deception threats including spear phishing, business email compromise, executive spoofing, and account takeover-based attacks.
Phishing Awareness Training
Use proven security awareness training and phishing simulation platforms to reduce spear phishing and social engineering attacks.
Automated Phishing Response
Your employees are not security experts and even with security training cannot consistently detect a spear phishing attack, costing Security Operations Centers time and resources to remediate phishing incidents.
