Spear phishing vs. phishing: What’s the difference and how to stop both

Spear phishing vs. phishing: What is spear phishing?

Spear phishing is a highly targeted form of phishing aimed at specific individuals or roles. Rather than sending a generic email to thousands of people, attackers research a smaller group and craft messages that look credible and relevant.

These emails often include the person’s real name, job title, and current work context. They may reference current colleagues, active projects, known suppliers, or internal processes. Attackers gather this information from places like LinkedIn, company websites, and data breaches. The aim is to blend into everyday communication, so the recipient doesn’t question the request.

Who attackers target

Spear phishing usually focuses on people who can move money, access systems, or handle customer information. This often includes:

• Finance leaders and team members
• Executive assistants
• IT administrators

One compromised account can give an attacker a trusted position inside an organization. From there, they can send legitimate-looking messages from a real mailbox or even from your domain.

Whaling and CEO fraud

Whaling is a method of spear phishing that targets senior executives such as CEOs and CFOs. These attacks typically involve sensitive or high-impact requests, including financial approvals or access to confidential documents.

CEO fraud is when attackers impersonate an executive and send urgent, believable instructions. Common examples include requests for payments or specific data. Both fall under Business Email Compromise (BEC), a category of spear phishing in which trusted email accounts are impersonated to commit fraud.

Why spear phishing affects customers too

A successful spear phishing attack doesn’t stop with internal access. Attackers frequently use a compromised account to target your customers. For example, a finance or support mailbox may be used to send fake invoices, “updated bank details,” or malicious verification links that appear legitimate.

Even without account access, attackers may spoof your domain to send emails that look like they came directly from your brand. From the customer’s perspective, the message came from you. When they lose money or share sensitive information, they believe your company failed to protect them.

That is why understanding spear phishing is essential for protecting both internal teams and customer trust.

Spear phishing vs. phishing: What is phishing?

Phishing is a broad term for scams where attackers use malicious emails, texts, social media messages, or phone calls to trick people into making unsafe decisions. These attacks aim to deceive as many people as possible, which is why phishing emails are often delivered at scale.

Typical phishing attempts try to:

• Steal login credentials
• Obtain credit card or banking details
• Install malware or ransomware

Unlike spear phishing, phishing is all about volume. Attackers send the same or slightly altered message to thousands of people, hoping a small percentage will click on a link or download an attachment.

Common characteristics of phishing

Most phishing campaigns share predictable traits. They often use generic greetings such as “Dear customer,” reference common services like banks or parcel deliveries, and create a sense of urgency. Many include links to fake login pages that mimic legitimate websites or attach files disguised as invoices or delivery notes.

How phishing hurts your customers and your organization

Phishing becomes a business problem when attackers impersonate your brand. Customers may enter credentials on a fake login page, download malware, or pay a fraudulent invoice that appears to come from your billing team.

Even if your systems are unaffected, your brand is impacted. The business effects often include:

• Higher support requests as clients ask whether an email is genuine
• Refunds or goodwill payments to affected customers
• Extra investigation and response work for IT and security teams
• Reputational damage that affects future deals and client confidence

Phishing may look like a “user issue,” but its consequences quickly become a customer trust, brand reputation, and operational problem for the company.

Spear phishing vs. phishing: Key differences that matter for your customers

Both spear phishing and phishing are dangerous, but they differ in scale, personalization, and per-email success rate.

Targeting and personalization

Phishing focuses on anyone with an email address. Messages are generic, repeatable, and often sourced from large mailing lists or breached databases.

Spear phishing targets specific people or roles. These emails use real names, job titles, and context from internal processes. The goal is to appear legitimate to a small number of high-value targets.

Effort, volume, and success rate

Phishing requires very little effort per email and is sent in massive volumes. The success rate per recipient is low, but the overall impact is high because of the scale.

Spear phishing takes time and research. Attackers send fewer emails, but the success rate per target is significantly higher because the messages are tailored and seem credible.

Spear phishing vs. phishing: Real-world email examples

Concrete examples make the difference between spear phishing and phishing easier to understand. They also help your teams spot red flags before an attacker reaches your customers.

Phishing example: “Your storage is almost full”

Subject: Your storage is almost full – action required

Hi user,

Your storage is almost full, and you won’t be able to save new files soon.

Click the link below to upgrade your available space now:

[Upgrade now]

Thank you,

Email Support Team

Red flags:

• Generic greeting (“Hi user”)
• Vague sender identity
• Urgent language
• A link that looks legitimate

If this email pretends to come from your brand, customers who click on the link may enter their credentials into a fake portal. Once their account is compromised, they often believe your brand failed to protect them.

Spear phishing example: “Action required on your account”

Subject: Action required: Security update on your account

Hi Alex,

We are completing a security update on user accounts following a recent system change. Your profile is shown as incomplete, and we need to verify your details so we can apply the update.

Please reply with your current username and the last four digits of your employee ID so we can proceed with the update. If this isn’t done by 15:00 today, your access to shared drives and Teams may be restricted.

Thanks for your quick response,

IT Support

Red flags:

• Uses a familiar internal tone and an identity that employees trust
• Requests sensitive information directly via email
• Pressures the recipient with a same-day deadline
• Creates urgency linked to work disruption (“access may be restricted”)

This type of spear phishing is often the first step in a larger attack – once the attacker captures the employee’s credentials, they can compromise the real mailbox.

Why this becomes your customer’s problem

Once an attacker compromises an internal mailbox, the next target is often your organization’s customers. A finance account can be used to send “updated bank details,” and a support account can send password reset links that appear genuine.

The pattern usually looks like this:

1. A customer receives a well-crafted, branded email.
2. They follow the instructions.
3. They lose money or access to their account.
4. They contact your team and say, “Your email scammed me.”

Spear phishing vs. phishing: Why one is so hard to detect

Spear phishing is hard to detect because it looks and feels like normal business communication. Traditional security tools are designed to catch obviously suspicious messages, while targeted attacks slip through unnoticed.

Why traditional detection struggles

Low volume

Spear phishing emails are sent in small numbers. Volume-based filtering often ignores them because nothing looks unusual.

High-quality content

The text is clean, professional, and free of typical red flags like malware attachments.

Abuse of trusted services

Attackers may use reputable cloud email services or compromised mailboxes, making the messages look authentic.

Impersonation of trusted roles

When an email appears to come from the CEO, CFO, or a known supplier, employees are more likely to act without questioning it.

Subtle techniques that bypass filters

Many spear phishing emails avoid attachments and obviously malicious links. Instead, they rely on more subtle tactics, including:

• Social engineering – Exploiting trust, urgency, and the desire to be helpful
• Process gaps – Targeting weak points in how approvals are handled
• Domain spoofing or account compromise – Sending from an address that looks legitimate

Once attackers gain access to a real mailbox, detection becomes even harder. They can reply to existing threads, forward previous conversations, and use accurate signatures. Every message looks legitimate because it comes from a legitimate account.

Why stronger controls are necessary

Content filtering alone can’t stop spear phishing. Companies need identity controls, domain authentication, and strong internal processes to defend against both spear phishing and phishing.

These controls help ensure that emails claiming to come from your domain actually do and protect your customers when attackers attempt to impersonate your brand.