Spear Phishing vs Phishing

With cybercrime rates soaring, you should be tightening your security in response. An effective way to protect your organization from spear phishing attacks is to stay informed about the current cybercrimes and follow phishing prevention best practices.

One of the hot ones nowadays is phishing. There’s also spear phishing. The two may appear similar, (know the difference between phishing and spear phishing) but there are subtle differences. Find out what they are when it comes to spear phishing vs phishing and how to protect from phishing.

Phishing defined

Phishing is a cybercrime committed on a large scale. Although their phishing email goes out to a large number of people, scammers don’t need to put much effort into their attack. All they have to do is craft a scam email, send it, and see if people fall for it.

The end goal of the phishing email is to procure people’s login details, which cybercriminals can then use to breach other accounts and get their hands on financial information.

MORE : What is a Phishing Email?

What’s spear phishing?

As the name implies, spear phishing is also a type of phishing. However, it takes more effort on the cybercriminals’ parts. Spear phishing is a concerted attack on either a person or organization, here you can find more spear phishing examples.

Because of this, they have to ensure their spear phishing email is more believable than a generic one. Scammers achieve this by doing extensive research on their victims before writing a convincing email. They can be so successful that they even fool security companies.

While phishing aims to obtain financial information, spear phishing usually has the higher goal of discovering trade secrets.

MORE : How to Prevent Spear Phishing?

Block both phishing and spear phishing

When it comes to spear phishing vs phishing, even professionals can fall victim. To avoid a similar fate, install phishing prevention software. It can prevent either kind of attack from making it into your inbox. With the software’s interception, you’ll drastically reduce the chances of your organization becoming another statistic in phishing attacks.

MORE : How to Prevent Phishing Emails?

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