Spear phishing is a fraudulent practice of sending emails from a seemingly known or trusted sender to induce targeted individuals to reveal confidential information. Spear phishing software help organizations manage such attacks, with an aim to reduce access to sensitive information. A Spear phishing attacker first collects information about the intended target and sends an email to the recipient. Trusting the email to be from a valid source, the recipient replies to the email and falls prey to spear phishing. The adoption of spear phishing software and training program creates awareness against malicious links, and attachments such as pdfs, excels, words and other documents. Spear phishing software and training programs enable the implementation of best practices against spear phishing attacks.

This market study provides information about the major vendors providing spear phishing software and outlines the findings and analysis on how well each market vendor performs within our criteria. Vendor evaluations are based on two broad categories, namely, product offerings and business strategies. Each category has various criteria, based on which, the vendors were evaluated. The evaluation criteria considered under product offerings include the breadth of offering, delivery (based on industries that the vendor caters to, deployment models, and subscriptions), and support (based on pre- and post-sale support services). The evaluation criteria considered under business strategies include reach (based on geographic presence), industry coverage (based on end users that the vendors cater to), and inorganic growth (based on partnerships, collaborations, and acquisitions).

These players have been marking their presence in the spear phishing solution market by offering highly customized and easily deployable software for the clients. The companies also adopted various strategies to achieve growth in the spear phishing market.

These vendors have an innovative portfolio of solutions and services and have an extensive network of channel partners and resellers to increase the deployment of their services across a multitude of verticals. Dynamic vendors have been generating considerable revenue in the spear phishing solution market, and their market position is supported by the organic and inorganic ventures undertaken by them in recent years.

These players have innovative portfolios of spear phishing solutions and services and a strong potential to build strategies for the growth of their businesses to be at par with the vanguards. They have been providing their customers innovative and customized spear phishing solutions. Innovators have been deploying their solutions for niche and custom requests by client requiring processing of high workloads.

Emerging players specialize in offering highly niche and tailor-made solutions and services to their clients. A majority of emerging vendors have been undertaking multiple acquisitions and increasing their sales capabilities across regions to offer their integrated services to a wide range of clients. The spear phishing market has been segmented, based on verticals, into education, government and defense, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, IT and telecommunication, media and entertainment, and critical infrastructure, among others. Other verticals wherein spear phishing solutions are deployed include transportation and educational facilities. The business emails can contain highly sensitive and critical data, which is targeted by cybercriminals and hackers. As the threat to email security continues to grow across various verticals, the market for spear phishing solutions is expected to consequently witness growth in the next five years. BANKING, FINANCIAL SERVICES, AND INSURANCE (BFSI) Organizations in the BFSI industry need security products and services that can protect employees, customers, assets, offices, branches, and operations. New and improved financial products and services are frequently introduced by the organizations to enhance their business operations and expand their customer base, which makes the industry a lucrative target for fraudsters. With facilities such as smart banking, internet banking, and mobile banking, the companies in the BFSI industry are required to prioritize email security solutions and was, therefore, the largest vertical of the spear phishing market. RETAIL The retail vertical is targeted by spear phishing attackers because of the large number of payouts monetary transactions made via VISA, MasterCard, and other payment processing networks in this sector. The security risks at all levels, including various transactions and confidentiality of personal information of customers and employees, has led to the rapid adoption of email security solutions in this vertical. Retail organizations need to secure POS terminals, e-commerce websites, third-party vendors, and employee’s access points among others. Customers of Amazon were targeted by spear phishing attacker, where customers received a word file with a macro that triggered the download of a ransomware. MANUFACTURING Manufacturers are harnessing a new generation of machine-to-machine systems, mobile apps, and cloudbased services. As manufacturing companies increasingly rely on software to automate processes, manage supply chains, and facilitate R&D, the digitization of processes and products them vulnerable to various advanced threats, which can lead to data security breaches and system breakdowns, ultimately delaying manufacturing speed. Accessing intellectual property is a primary objective of spear phishers, which has resulted in several vendors of spear phishing solutions to train their customers to identify conversational phishing, highlypersonalized attacks, and attachment-based phishing with various file formats.