Pretexting is a sibling of phishing and like siblings both have differences as well as similarities. Phishing emails use fear and urgency to drive users to take actions that compromise their system. Pretexting is much more positive – it centers around the hacker building a false sense of trust with the victim.

The most prevalent pretexting scenario is when an attacker poses as an IT person who sends an email — or a voicemail or robo-call directing targets to visit a certain website and enter information to confirm their identity.

Another deeper example of pretexting is an attacker who poses as external IT consultants – perhaps a security auditor – who then manipulates the company’s security staff to let him/her into the building or datacenter. Another would be someone posing as a pizza delivery person who needs access to the office building to deliver a pizza to ‘the guys up in network ops…’

Where phishing relies mainly on urgency and fear, pretexting lives and dies by how well the attacker creates credibility with his/her story.