phishing relates to a set of social engineering cyberattacks in which an attacker sends fraudulent communications that appear to come from a reputable source with the intent of tricking the recipient into granting the attacker access to systems, resources, or information.
phishing is often carried out via digital communications such as email or SMS messaging.
There are many variations of the word “phishing” that provide more context to the manner in which an attack is conducted. For example, spearphishing is an attack targeting a specific user or set of users rather than casting a large net and seeing what you can catch with traditional phishing.