Account Takeover (ATO): A form of identity theft and fraud, the goal of an ATO attack is for a malicious third party to capture and exploit a user’s account credentials, enabling the attacker to pose as the victim for other operations. 

Angler Phishing: Phishing through social media that includes direct messages and phony alert emails from social media sites. 

Brand Impersonation: Pretending to send messages from a well-known brand to masquerade as a trusted source. 

Business Email Compromise (BEC): Using legitimate email accounts from a business partner to fraudulently obtain money or data. 

Credential Theft: Tricking the victim into providing their credentials to bad actors, sometimes using a website or link. 

Filter: Shields used by software to funnel traffic, like spam email, into another location. 

Lure: Also called bait or a hook, the lure is the email or message that “phishermen” use to attract the target’s attention. 

Malware Attack: A piece of malicious code or software that infects systems to facilitate cybercrime like data encryption or theft. All ransomware is by nature malware, but there are other types of malware, like key loggers and payment skimmers, that can be delivered via phishing. 

Phishing Attack: A cyberattack in which a cybercriminal sends a victim a message that is designed to lure them into taking an action that facilitates another kind of cyberattack against the victim, like getting someone to open an attachment that contains ransomware. Phishing can also defraud the victim out of valuable information like passwords.  

Phishing Resistance: This is the amount of savvy that employees show when faced with phishing — a skillset that enables them to spot and stop dangerous messages. 

Payload: The “bomb” that a phishing message carries that is typically some manner of malware or ransomware. Quarantine: A separate system location where dangerous messages are sent for review for a preset period of time, in order to prevent them from reaching most employees.  

Ransomware: A subtype of malware, ransomware encrypts a victim’s data and systems, enabling cybercriminals to demand a ransom for the decryption key. Ransomware can also be used to steal data, shut down production lines, and take infrastructure offline. It is the preferred weapon of nation-state cybercriminals.

Spear-Phishing: Learning details about the target and then crafting an email that will entice them to interact with it. This is the most common form of phishing, often utilizing data about the victim gathered from the dark web. It’s also the primary delivery system for malware and ransomware. 

Spoofing: Attacks that take a legitimate message, cloning it, and then using it to facilitate a phishing attack. 

Whaling/CEO Fraud: A highly targeted, sophisticated attack aimed at a CEO or another senior executive in order to persuade them to perform an action, such as a wire transfer of funds.