Phishing is one of the oldest cyberattacks, yet it remains the most effective against Brazilian companies to this day.
In 2025, Brazil recorded 553 million phishing scam attempts in just 12 months, equivalent to 1.5 million attacks per day, solidifying the country's position as the leader in this type of crime in Latin America.
The figure is staggering, but what is truly concerning is not the volume, but the increasing sophistication of these approaches: with the use of artificial intelligence, fraudulent messages have become so convincing that they deceive even experienced employees.
Understanding what phishing is, how it manifests in daily corporate life, and how to protect your company's environment is the first step to avoiding becoming part of this statistic. Read on.
Phishing is a social engineering attack technique, which means it relies on manipulating people into taking harmful actions, such as clicking on malicious links, providing login credentials, or authorizing financial transfers.
The term comes from the English word fishing, and the analogy is accurate: the criminal casts a digital lure and waits for the victim to take the bait.
Contrary to what many managers believe, phishing rarely depends on complex technical flaws. This is because its The primary vector is human behavior.
An email that appears to be from your bank, a text message with a delivery tracking link, or an urgent notification from the IT department requesting a password reset: these are all examples of bait that exploit the haste, trust, and lack of attention common in the corporate day-to-day.
When the bait works, the consequences range from the theft of access credentials for critical systems to the silent installation of malware that remains dormant in the environment for weeks before triggering a ransomware attack.
Therefore, understanding phishing is understanding one of the main entry points for much more serious incidents.
Phishing has evolved significantly in recent years, moving from generic messages full of grammatical errors to highly personalized approaches that accurately mimic the communication style of vendors, colleagues, and even leaders within the organization itself.
Knowing the most frequent types helps individuals recognize an attack before they click.
Take a look:
The most classic and still the most prevalent model. The criminal sends an email posing as a known institution, such as a bank, software provider, vendor, or government agency, inducing the recipient to click a link that redirects to a fake page or to download an attachment containing malware.
In corporate environments, messages posing as HR announcements, internal system notifications, or vendor invoices are the most commonly used formats, as they exploit contexts that the employee is already expecting to receive.
Spear phishing is a personalized variant of conventional phishing, directed at specific targets, such as a CFO, an IT analyst, or a purchasing manager.
Before acting, the criminal researches information about the victim on social media, the company website, and open sources, crafting a message that appears completely legitimate.
For example, an email that appears to be sent by the CEO requesting an urgent transfer to a new vendor is one of the most common forms of spear phishing in corporate environments, also known as BEC (Business Email Compromise).
Smishing uses text messages sent via SMS, WhatsApp, or other messaging platforms to distribute malicious links.
It is particularly effective because the mobile context creates a sense of urgency and informality that reduces the time for critical analysis before clicking. Messages such as delivery alerts, notifications of unauthorized charges, or account update requests are the most frequent approaches.
Furthermore, criminals use RPA automation to send millions of smishing messages in a matter of hours, exponentially increasing the reach of their attacks.
Vishing occurs via phone calls, with criminals posing as bank representatives, IT support technicians, or vendor representatives.
In a corporate environment, vishing often follows a previously sent phishing email, acting as the second stage of the attack: the call confirms the email and adds urgency so the victim takes the requested action before questioning it.
The use of artificial intelligence to clone the voices of known individuals has already been documented in recent cases, making this type of attack even harder to identify.
Recognizing the signs of a phishing attack requires attention to details that often go unnoticed in the daily rush. Periodic training significantly increases teams' ability to identify these threats before taking action.
The most frequent indicators include:
• A sender with a domain slightly different from the original, such as @microsoft-support.com instead of @microsoft.com
• Artificial urgency in the message, with tight deadlines and threats of account blocks or fines to pressure immediate action
• Links that, when hovered over without clicking, reveal URLs different from the destination stated in the text
• Requests for credentials, banking information, or transfer authorizations through unusual channels
• Attachments with unusual extensions or generic names like invoice.pdf.exe or receipt.zip
• Messages arriving outside of normal business hours or from contacts with whom there is no frequent interaction
However, it is important to recognize that well-crafted spear phishing attacks can bypass all these visual filters. Therefore, human identification must be complemented by technological tools that analyze the content, sender, and behavior of the message automatically and in real time.
The impact of a phishing attack goes far beyond the initial message. In most cases, phishing acts as an entry point for more serious threats, leaving the company's environment vulnerable to consequences that can persist for weeks or months after the click.
· Compromise of corporate credentials: with login and password in hand, the criminal gains access to emails, internal systems, cloud environments, and customer data, often selling these credentials to other criminal groups.
· Installation of malware and ransomware: malicious attachments or redirects to compromised pages install software that monitors the network, steals data, or, in the case of ransomware, encrypts files and completely paralyzes operations.
· Financial fraud via BEC: spear phishing directed at financial managers can result in transfers to fraudulent accounts, with losses that are rarely recovered once the transaction is confirmed.
· Penalties for personal data exposure: when phishing results in unauthorized access to customer or employee data, the company may face notification obligations and sanctions from the ANPD, with fines of up to 2% of annual revenue, in accordance with the LGPD.
· Reputational damage and loss of trust: customers, partners, and suppliers impacted by a phishing-related incident often reconsider their relationship with the company, creating a reputational cost that is difficult to measure and even harder to recover from.
Effective protection against phishing begins with the recognition that employee training and basic spam filters are not enough in the face of today's sophisticated attacks.
A robust strategy combines technological layers with processes and governance, covering both automated detection and rapid incident response.
The Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers multi-layered protection specifically designed to combat phishing in the corporate environment.
Plan 1 protects email and collaboration environments against malware, phishing, and zero-day business email compromise attacks, including malicious links in attachments and Teams messages.
Plan 2, in turn, adds phishing simulations for team training, post-incident investigation, automated response, and advanced visibility into attack attempts over time, allowing you to identify patterns before they become incidents.
Regardless of your current security maturity stage, some measures immediately reduce the phishing attack surface for any company:
• Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users, especially for accounts with access to critical systems
• Configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records on your corporate domain to make sender spoofing more difficult
• Conduct periodic phishing simulations to train employees under realistic conditions
• Establish a clear channel for reporting suspicious messages, with agile responses from the IT team
• Review access permissions so that a compromised employee does not expose the entire environment
Frayha implements and manages these protection layers in an integrated way, configuring Microsoft Defender for Office 365, structuring identity and access policies with Microsoft Entra ID, and conducting phishing simulations to continuously measure and improve team awareness levels.
For companies that still rely on basic spam filters and one-off training, Frayha's free diagnostic is the starting point to understand where the real gaps are and how to close them before a successful attack reveals what could have been avoided.
👉Request a free diagnostic and discover how your company is positioned against phishing attacks.
No. Spam is any unsolicited message sent in bulk, usually for commercial purposes. Phishing is a specific category of attack with criminal intent: to deceive the recipient to steal data, credentials, or money. All email phishing may look like spam, but not all spam is phishing.
Training is essential, but not sufficient. Modern spear phishing attacks, created with AI and based on real information about the victim, can deceive even experienced employees. Therefore, the human layer must be complemented by technological detection and response tools, such as Microsoft Defender for Office 365.
The immediate procedure includes: disconnecting the device from the corporate network, notifying the IT team, resetting the affected employee's credentials, and initiating a forensic analysis of the environment to check for lateral movement of the attack. The faster the response, the smaller the window of exposure.
Partially. Microsoft 365 includes basic anti-phishing protections in all mailboxes. However, advanced protections, such as Safe Links, Safe Attachments, impersonation protection, and attack simulations, are only available in Microsoft Defender for Office 365, which must be configured correctly to provide real protection. Simply having the license does not guarantee protection.
Yes. Phishing is not a threat exclusive to the Microsoft ecosystem. Users of Google Workspace, communication platforms like Teams and Slack, and any other corporate environment are equally exposed, as the attack exploits human behavior regardless of the tool being used.
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