What is Spear-Phishing? How it Works & Best Ways To Stop

17 March 2025

Cybersecurity challenges have now become a daily concern. With phishing attacks on the rise, one particularly dangerous tactic, known as spear phishing, has been making headlines. It has affected both individuals and organisations. Unlike other attacks, spear phishing is highly targeted, using personal details to trick people into sharing sensitive information. Reports highlight it to be the most common cyber threat to UK businesses. As we explore spear phishing in this guide, we will learn how exactly this works and its impact on organisational safety, including measures to prevent it.

What is Spear Phishing in Cyber Security

Spear phishing is a cyberattack where hackers prepare personalised emails or messages to trick specific individuals into revealing sensitive information. Unlike other techniques such as blagging, however, spear phishing appears legitimate, such as bosses, banks, or colleagues. Cybercriminals try to lure victims into tapping their malicious links or sharing passwords.

While common phishing attempts can be spotted, spear phishing is referred to as a smarter, more advanced form of attack. These emails are properly designed to appear authentic, sent by cybercriminals known as "spear phishers."

Before starting, they gather key details, such as your name, email, and personal activities, ensuring their message feels natural, easily passes spam filters, and lures you into their trap. Although cybercriminals don’t rely on a single tactic. Rather, they use different spear phishing techniques.

Some of them include:

How does it Work

In 2024, around 84% of businesses in the UK experienced phishing attacks, marking a significant increase since 2023. The success of these attacks shows how both companies and individuals can face difficulty in identifying genuine emails or messages from fake ones.

Unlike regular phishing, these attacks are personalised, making them harder to detect. Cybercriminals research their victims in advance, crafting emails or messages that appear real and correct.

Here’s how they actually work:

• First, attackers gather information about their target from social media, company websites, or other databases.
• Using the collected data, hackers create an email or message that looks authentic.
• The spear phishing email is sent. They can bypass spam filters due to their legitimate appearance. They can also contain harmful links or files.
• The victim, believing the message is real, clicks those links, downloads an attachment, or shares sensitive information. However, this provides attackers access to their devices or accounts.
• As they gain access, they may steal private files, money or even install malware.

Understanding What is Spear-Phishing Impact on Business Safety

Spear phishing can have several impacts on businesses. If the attackers are successful in tricking employees, the consequences can be severe.

• Spear phishing emails steal credentials or spread malware, targeting finance, HR, or IT roles to access sensitive company data and records.
• Data breaches cause financial losses, fines, legal costs, and fraud risks.
• A spear-phishing attack can harm a company’s reputation. Moreover, this can affect the trust of customers as well as clients.
• In addition, spear phishing attacks can disrupt operations by granting attackers access to critical systems, enabling data encryption, deletion, or denial-of-service issues.

What is a Spear Phishing Attack: Best Prevention Method

Spear phishing can cause huge losses, however, there are several measures you can take to prevent it. Let’s understand how.

• Considering Security Tools: To stay protected, you will need to use suitable security tools like email filters, authentication protocols, antivirus, and multi-factor login.
• Introducing Multi-Factor Authentication: Multi-factor authentication or MFA will require an extra verification step for logins to prevent unauthorised access, even if credentials are stolen.
• Keeping System and Software Up to Date: Keep operating systems, applications, and security software updated, as this helps improve vulnerabilities that might be used by attackers.
• Limiting User Access: Moreover, you can restrict user permissions to only necessary data and systems, reducing potential damage.
• Improving Staff Awareness: However, your team is your strongest shield against spear phishing. So, with the right training and awareness, they’ll be far less likely to fall for scams. In addition, conduct fake phishing exercises and provide necessary training.

Conclusion

Not only technology but also cyberattacks are evolving. As we saw, both businesses and individuals are equally prone to falling victim to spear phishing. Most commonly, these attackers exploit trust, fear, urgency, or manipulate emotions to infiltrate systems. However, this doesn’t mean there is no solution. By staying proactive, verifying access requests, investing in the right tools and focusing on employee awareness, it is possible to prevent these attacks.