High-impact request
The message seeks a major payment, sensitive document, privileged access, strategic information, or an exception only the target can authorize.
Whaling Awareness
How to Recognize and Report Whaling
Whaling is targeted phishing aimed at senior leaders or other people whose authority, access, public profile, or relationships make a successful deception especially consequential.
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
Whaling: a practical definition
Whaling is targeted phishing aimed at senior leaders or other people whose authority, access, public profile, or relationships make a successful deception especially consequential.
Whaling describes the target and potential impact, not one fixed technique. An attack may use executive travel, legal matters, board activity, transactions, or trusted relationships as context.
Source: CISA Phishing Guidance
02Recognition clues
Warning signs employees can check in a whaling 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.
Private executive context
The sender references leadership, board, legal, investor, acquisition, or travel activity to discourage ordinary review.
Delegation pressure
An assistant or employee is told the executive has already approved an action that is not visible in the established process.
03Safe response
Move from suspicion to a supported next step
| Moment | Employee action | Program preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Before acting | Use the executive office's known contact and approval process, including required legal, finance, security, or second-person review for consequential actions. | 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
Whaling 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.
Fictional board document
Practice verifying an unexpected restricted-document share without copying a real board event.
Executive travel request
Use an invented itinerary and teach assistants to confirm changes through the known travel or executive-office route.
Delegated payment claim
Ask finance to verify a fictional statement that a leader has privately approved an exception.
05Campaign workflow
Build the exercise around a decision employees can repeat
- 1
Define the behavior
Write down the whaling 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 whaling 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 whaling the same as CEO fraud?
They overlap but are not identical. Whaling targets an executive or other high-impact individual; CEO fraud impersonates an executive to influence someone else.
Should executives receive different training?
Training should reflect their authority, assistants, devices, travel, approval workflows, and limited time. It should also test the processes around the executive, not isolate one person as the problem.
Can whaling 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. Coordinate with the executive office and use fictional, non-sensitive context. Do not reveal schedules, transactions, personal matters, board content, legal issues, or security arrangements.
How should whaling 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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