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Spear Phishing
Threats
Targeted social engineering using personalized context.
Definition
Spear phishing tailors messages to a specific target using contextual information, increasing credibility and success rates for credential theft or malicious actions.
In plain English
Targeted social engineering using personalized context.
Why this matters
Why it matters: It raises compromise likelihood for high-value accounts and can bypass generic security awareness.
Example
Example: Impersonation of an internal executive requesting an urgent login or transfer.