Phishing

How it is used

Probably the word employees hear most in security training. Teams talk about phishing emails, phishing campaigns and phishing simulations. Targeted phishing is called spear phishing; phishing by text message is smishing and by phone call is vishing.

Example sentences

1. Several staff reported the phishing email before anyone entered their password.

2. Our last phishing simulation had a click rate of eight percent.

Common collocations

• phishing email
• phishing campaign
• spear phishing
• phishing simulation
• report a phishing attempt

Related terms

• social engineeringManipulating people, rather than breaking technology, to make them reveal information, give access or take an action that helps an attacker.
• credentialsThe details that prove who a user is and let them log in, most often a username and password, but also keys, tokens and certificates.
• security awarenessEmployees' knowledge of everyday security risks, such as phishing and weak passwords, and of what to do about them; also the training that builds this knowledge.
• spoofingFaking an identity or source, such as an email sender, a phone number, a website or an IP address, so that a message or connection seems to come from someone trusted.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• phishing · Software Engineering
• phishing · Blockchain & Crypto
• phishing · Finance & Banking

More terms: Threats and Attacks

• threat
• exploit
• compromise
• DDoS
• attack surface
• brute-force attack
• privilege escalation
• lateral movement
• SQL injection
• cross-site scripting
• man-in-the-middle attack
• threat actor