Detailed story, unclear authority
The requester provides convincing background but cannot be matched to the role or approval needed for the action.
Pretexting Awareness
How to Recognize and Report Pretexting
Pretexting is the use of a fabricated identity or situation to make a request seem legitimate and persuade someone to provide information, access, money, or assistance.
Use this guide to turn the threat into a clear employee decision, a safe practice scenario, and a reporting step your organization can support.
Plain-English definition • Warning signs • Safe simulation ideas • Reporting practice
01Understand the threat
Pretexting: a practical definition
Pretexting is the use of a fabricated identity or situation to make a request seem legitimate and persuade someone to provide information, access, money, or assistance.
The story is the mechanism. A pretext may unfold across email, phone, chat, forms, or in-person contact and can use genuine public information to sound credible.
Source: CISA Phishing Guidance
02Recognition clues
Warning signs employees can check in a pretexting message
No single clue proves that a message is malicious. Teach employees to combine the request, sender, business context, destination, and available verification route before acting.
Boundary testing
The person begins with harmless questions and gradually asks for internal details, exceptions, access, or sensitive data.
Channel manipulation
The requester asks to avoid the normal service desk, manager, customer process, or documented verification step.
03Safe response
Move from suspicion to a supported next step
| Moment | Employee action | Program preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Before acting | Confirm identity, authority, and business purpose through the known organizational process before sharing information or completing the request. | Publish the authentic contact, application, or reporting route somewhere employees can reach without using the message. |
| When uncertain | Pause the request and report it through the approved channel with enough context for review. | Explain what the response team needs and how employees will know that their report was received. |
| After an interaction | Stop, contact the responsible team promptly, and describe the action taken without hiding the mistake. | Provide a well-known response route and avoid communications that discourage early reporting. |
Source: NIST: Recognizing, verifying, and reporting phishing
04Practice safely
Pretexting simulation and discussion ideas
Choose one learning objective per exercise. Use fictional people, organizations, accounts, payments, documents, and events, and test the reporting route before sending to employees.
New-starter support
Use a fictional employee who asks for an access exception and practice routing them through the real identity process.
Supplier research call
Discuss which operational details can be shared and where an unfamiliar vendor should be directed.
Executive assistant request
Practice verifying an unusual calendar, document, or travel-related request without using a real executive's plans.
05Campaign workflow
Build the exercise around a decision employees can repeat
- 1
Define the behavior
Write down the pretexting clue being practiced, the expected action, the authorized audience, and the owner of follow-up.
- 2
Confirm the real process
Test the independent verification route, message-reporting option, response handoff, and employee support path from a representative account.
- 3
Pilot the scenario
Check delivery, links, landing content, accessibility, event records, automated inspection, stop conditions, and the explanation employees will receive.
- 4
Review in context
Reconcile intended recipients, successful deliveries, unique employee events, verified reports, response handling, and completed follow-up before drawing conclusions.
Source: NIST SP 800-50 Rev. 1: Building a Cybersecurity and Privacy Learning Program
06Useful measurement
Evaluate recognition, reporting, and the surrounding process
Record actual counts and denominators for delivery, unique recipient events, reports, and follow-up. Separate automated email inspection and repeat events where the available evidence supports doing so.
A pretexting exercise samples one scenario under one set of conditions. It does not establish an employee's intent, overall security awareness, or likelihood of responding the same way to a real attack.
Use findings to improve the real workflow: clearer verification instructions, easier reporting, faster response handling, better role-specific training, or a business control that reduces reliance on email alone.
Common questions
Common questions about Phishmake's features, onboarding, and support, answered to help you get started with confidence.
Is pretexting always phishing?
No. Pretexting can occur through several channels. It becomes part of phishing when a deceptive message uses the fabricated story to prompt an action.
What should training emphasize?
Teach employees to verify the requester's identity, authority, and business purpose through known processes, even when the story contains accurate details.
Can pretexting be used in a phishing simulation?
It can be practiced when the scenario is authorized, proportionate, and tied to a real reporting or verification process. Avoid real personal crises, health matters, job loss, law enforcement, immigration, family emergencies, or other coercive themes. Use fictional identities and proportionate requests.
How should pretexting simulation results be measured?
Review successful delivery, unique employee events, reports, response handling, and completed follow-up. Include scenario difficulty and operating context, and do not treat a click or report as a complete measure of employee risk.
Sources & further reading
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