Quishing is phishing delivered through a QR code. The attacker encodes a malicious URL inside a square of pixels, drops it into a corporate email or prints it over a legitimate sign, and lets the target’s phone do the rest. Email filters see an image, not a link. The victim scans on a personal device that sits outside every corporate security control. That mismatch is what makes quishing work.
Your phone buzzes. A text from your “bank” says suspicious activity was detected on your account. Click here to verify. The link looks legitimate. The message is urgent.
You’re already reaching for the link before you’ve finished reading.
That reaction is exactly why smishing works. SMS phishing succeeds where email fails because we’ve spent years training ourselves to distrust our inboxes. Nobody taught us to be suspicious of texts.
Your employees stopped working from secure office networks a long time ago. They access company data from smartphones on public WiFi, tablets at coffee shops, and laptops in home offices. That shift expanded your attack surface in ways most security training programs still haven’t caught up with.
Attackers noticed before you did. Mobile-specific attacks like smishing (SMS phishing) have increased over 300% in recent years, according to Proofpoint’s 2023 State of the Phish report. The same employee who carefully evaluates every email on their work computer will tap a malicious link on their phone without a second thought. That gap between desktop caution and mobile carelessness is where breaches happen.
