How Different Industries Are Fighting Email Phishing: Trends and Strategies

The Rise of Sector-Specific Email Phishing

If you think your business is safe from phishing attacks because of the sector it operates in, you are misinformed. According to Verizon’s DBIR 2025 [1], phishing is the initial access vector in 15% of data breaches.

Why is Phishing the #1 Choice for Attackers?

Today, a good phishing attack doesn’t demand drill-down technical know-how. It has a low entry barrier, but delivers high ROI. Think sensitive credentials, system access, direct financial fraud, or gaining lateral access to networks. Another reason behind the popularity of phishing attacks is that they target people rather than technology. Attackers try to convince employees/individuals to commit an error.

A phishing attack can also be scaled on demand and automated. Criminals can send a barrage of phishing emails across different companies in a sector to score a payday, effortlessly.

Sectoral Phishing Attacks

• 1.6 million clinical trial records exposed on the internet. [2]
• Emails of executives and other employees of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were hacked. [3]
• Cyberattacks have hit high-profile retailers like Cartier and The North Face. [4]
• According to a 2025 Fraud Trends white paper, 33% of respondents said BEC was a huge threat to their banks and client base. [5]

These incidents clearly indicate a rise in phishing attacks across sectors; a trend consistently reflected in recent email phishing statistics from global cybersecurity reports.

Sectoral phishing attacks are rising because attackers no longer chase volume alone; they are chasing attack ROI. Sending huge volumes of emails and praying that something sticks is a strategy that is being thrown in the bin.

Crafting an email that takes cognizance of the processes and pressures of a given industry has a much higher success rate. Healthcare inboxes, for example, are flooded with vendor invoices and test results. Manufacturers and retail companies are dependent on a sprawling supply chain network, so “changed banking details” look routine. Education and public sector employees trust official portals, so spoofed grant or tax deadlines get clicks.

Phishing attacks are being crafted to mimic industry-specific workflows and trust signals.

Phishing in Finance A Top Target & What to Do About It

Finance is a particularly lucrative industry for attackers because it involves handling large sums of money. Breaching financial institutions usually means a bigger payday, whether through direct theft, fraud, or secondary misuse of data (e.g., identity theft, extortion, or resale).

We keep hearing news of BFSIs impacted by Business Email Compromises (BEC), credential thefts, and payment diversions as employees keep falling for phishing emails. Attackers disguise themselves as trusted sources to convince key stakeholders to either share extremely sensitive credentials, take malicious action, or initiate payment transfer to fraudulent accounts.

Why Financial Institutions Are Prime Phishing Targets

Money is constantly on the move across different finance functions, including treasury, payroll, customer transactions, business transactions, and vendor payments. Precious customer data, including PII, credit, and account history, and more, is also up for grabs, which can be sold on the black market or leveraged for launching secondary attacks. Additionally, breaches negatively impact trust in a brand and also attract compliance penalties.

Remedial Measures

• Layered authentication across finance functions ensures a single failure won’t compromise the system.
• AI-driven monitoring identifies and blocks unusual logins, account access, and payment activity, which adds another layer of protection.
• Establish real-time transaction and wire transfer checks to keep one step ahead of transaction modification.
• Prepare employees through regular training and phishing simulations campaigns to ensure finance teams can recognize payment diversions, fake invoices, and other evolving threats.

Phishing in Healthcare In the Crosshairs of the Threat Actors

Phishing emails with fake reports requiring “urgent” attention, fake medical bills, and insurance transactions are common in the healthcare domain. Considering the potentially huge payday, attackers are also using step-wise phishing attacks, including pretexting, deep counterfeit audios and videos, to gain access to sensitive personal information.

Why Healthcare is a Top Phishing Attack Candidate

Healthcare retains highly sensitive data – patient medical histories, insurance details, test results – all under strict regulatory frameworks like HIPAA (US), GDPR (EU), etc. And while its data is protected under several data regulations, cybercriminals still consider it fair game. Healthcare organizations work with various stakeholders, including insurers, laboratories, device manufacturers, and numerous third-party vendors. Attackers also see this complex payment framework ripe for exploitation.

Remedial Measures

• Assign focused, need-based privilege access to information like PHI, and ensure both clinical/medical and admin systems are properly segmented, to minimize incident impact.
• Enforce MFA on email and EHRs, with the complexity of authentication increasing in line with the sensitivity of the access/ information.
• Different roles, such as billers, insurance, clinical staff, and doctors, demand different levels of security awareness training.
• Have a ready incident response playbook to take action when an attack happens, including steps to reset credentials, isolate systems, and minimize damage.

Phishing in Retail Cybercriminals Love this Domain

Retail is a people-centric industry, fuelled by interactions between customers and businesses. Attackers can easily fake these interactions.  Phishing attacks take the form of malicious failed delivery emails that ask recipients to click a link for confirmation. Fake campaigns offer “exclusive deals” or gift cards that redirect to phishing pages; typically, these deals are too good to be true, which should be an immediate red flag.  Victims can also fall prey to lookalike domains or spoofed websites that have just one core objective – to collect customer login details and payment card data.

Why is Retail Under Phishing Attack?

Retailers manage millions of daily customer interactions through various touchpoints, including POS, email, messages, online stores, and more, making for a high ROI target.  A retail business, especially with a global presence, must work with numerous vendors, logistic providers, payment providers, sales personnel, and more across geographies. Many gaps in people, process, and technology can be exploited.

 Remedial Measures

• Instill trust in your brand’s communications with customers/vendors/third-parties by establishing protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, which prevent spoofed order/shipping emails.
• Couple the use of Verified Mark Certificates (VMCs) and Common Mark Certificates (CMCs) with DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to display a verified logo in inboxes, giving customers clear proof they are interacting with a trusted email.
• Implement a strategy to track all look-alike domains, apps, and fake promotional pages, as well as social ads, to prevent phishing attacks launched via these fake assets.
• List business emails, websites, phone numbers, and more to ensure your customers don’t fall prey to fake messaging from fake entities.

Phishing in Education The Most Attacked Industry of 2025

While the global average cost of a data breach has decreased, the cost of a data breach in the education sector [6] has actually increased. Spoofed campus portals, fake scholarships & financial aid emails, faculty or admin impersonality, and malicious coursework attachments are just some of the many common phishing tactics used by cybercriminals in the education sector. Additionally, a lack of security awareness among students, teachers, and administrative staff increases the likelihood of phishing attacks succeeding.

Why Education Is Under Phishing Attack

In spring 2025, the number of student enrolments across US colleges totaled 18.4 million [7]. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the education sector (schools, colleges, universities, and training centers) totaled 13 million [8]. Each person means an inbox that criminals can attack. Also, many educational institutions suffer from an IT sprawl, underpinned by legacy systems, third-party learning platforms, and collaboration tools. Inconsistency in maturity levels across departments creates security weaknesses that cybercriminals can easily exploit.

Remedial Measures

• Establish strict MFA protocols for all students, admins, and teaching platforms.
• Utilize Identity and Access Management protocols to grant access to critical academic information to only specific accounts.
• Security awareness training must imitate scenarios like fake scholarship offers, tuition payment reminders, or exam result emails, and any other scenarios that mirror college life and processes.
• Use only secure .edu institutional domains with DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to instill trust in inboxes and make domain spoofing difficult.
• Make it simple for students and faculty to report suspicious emails through campus IT helpdesks or LMS platforms.

Phishing in the Public Sector Governments Under Fire

Back in 2024, cybercriminals stole £47 million from HM Revenue & Customs [9] in a phishing attack. This goes to show that governments and their entities are high-value targets. Emails crafted by Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors impersonate government agencies or even global organizations to access sensitive systems.  There have also been instances of phishing emails targeting power grids, water utilities, or transportation systems, enabling sabotage or ransomware deployment. A case in point is hackers trying to sabotage 7 Indian power hubs. [10]

Why the Public Sector Is Under Phishing Attack

Government agencies and infrastructure operators hold a range of sensitive records, including citizen information, defense data, and key operational intelligence.  A single phishing-led breach can expose classified information, compromise essential utilities, or disrupt critical infrastructure systems. Governments also employ millions of people. These people often work in a decentralized department with inconsistent levels of cybersecurity. E.g., the central finance department will be heavily protected; however, at the city level, finance departments might not have the same level of cybersecurity maturity. Every inbox in a government agency at the Central, State, or City level is an opportunity for phishers.

Remedial Measures

• The default setting should be to treat every asset, inside or outside the network perimeter, as suspicious; verify user identity continuously and leverage segmentation to minimize phishing impact.
• Establish a mechanism for sharing threat information between agencies tasked with protecting sensitive government installations, ensuring the accelerated identification of attack vectors.
• Basic yet necessary security protocols such as MFA, DMARC, and more should be strictly enforced across public-sector organizations.
• An overarching cybersecurity strategy should be underpinned by a coordinated, structured, and immediate response to security incidents.

Conclusion

Phishing continues to be one of the most popular types of cyberattacks across sectors. The reason it’s so common and still makes an impact is its human-centricity. Rather than breaking layered technological defenses, all it needs is to convince an employee to make an unknowing error. It is a psychological play.

The common theme of learning from phishing attacks across sectors is that processes, people, and platforms should work in tandem to keep phishing at bay. With the reality that phishing has moved beyond emails CISOs and cybersecurity leaders across sectors must note that traditional defenses should give way to a more dynamic security framework. Learnings from one industry should be applied to another; the anti-phishing playbook must keep evolving.

References:

[1] https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/Tb53/reports/2025-dbir-data-breach-investigations-report.pdf
[2] https://www.hipaajournal.com/clinical-trials-database-containing-1-6-million-records-exposed-online/
[3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/us-regulator-occ-notifies-congress-major-security-breach-2025-04-08/
[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39x3jpv8lyo
[5] https://d15fjz85703yz4.cloudfront.net/1517/5587/8816/themis-2025-fraud-trends-DFR-MULTI-WTP-2501-2700.pdf
[6] https://www.ibm.com/think/x-force/2025-cost-of-a-data-breach-navigating-ai
[7] https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-enrollment-statistics/
[8] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/learning-about-educational-services-employment-for-american-education-week.htm
[9] https://www.ft.com/content/18c1af2c-0104-4cba-b106-6a2e8e50b93c
[10] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/chinese-hackers-targeted-7-indian-power-hubs-govt-says-ops-failed-101649356540330.html