Why CISOs Should Fight Phishing as Campaigns, Not Just Emails

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-30

If you're a CISO, you already know the feeling. Your inbox is a battlefield, and every day brings a fresh wave of suspicious emails. But here's the thing: treating each one as a separate incident is exhausting, inefficient, and frankly, a losing game. Cofense, a leader in threat intelligence, is making a bold case for a smarter approach. Instead of chasing individual indicators of compromise (IOCs), it's time to think in campaigns. ### The Real Problem: IOC Fatigue Let's talk about IOC fatigue. It's that creeping sense of overwhelm when your security team is drowning in alerts, each one demanding immediate attention. You're constantly pivoting from one potential threat to another, but you never seem to get ahead. The classic model of hunting for specific IOCs—like a malicious file hash or a suspicious IP address—is reactive. By the time you find one, the attacker has likely already moved on to a new tactic, a new email, a new victim. This isn't just about being busy. It's about being effective. When your analysts are stuck in a perpetual game of whack-a-mole, they lose sight of the bigger picture. They can't see the forest for the trees, and that's precisely where attackers thrive. They're counting on you to be distracted by the noise while they execute a well-orchestrated plan. ### Shifting the Mindset: From Emails to Campaigns So, what does it mean to think in campaigns? Instead of viewing phishing attempts as isolated events, you start to see them as part of a larger, coordinated strategy. A campaign is a series of related attacks that share common infrastructure, tactics, and goals. It's the difference between spotting a single raindrop and recognizing that you're in the middle of a storm. This shift in perspective is powerful. When you identify a campaign, you're not just stopping one email. You're dismantling a whole operation. You're looking for the patterns that connect the dots, like the same command-and-control server being used across multiple attacks, or a similar lure being used to target different departments within your company. ### How Campaign-Based Detection Changes the Game Cofense argues that this approach fundamentally improves your security posture. Here's how: - **Better Visibility:** By grouping attacks, you get a high-level view of what's actually targeting your organization. You can see which campaigns are most active, which departments are being targeted, and what the attackers' end game might be. - **Faster Response:** Instead of investigating every single alert from scratch, you can apply known intelligence from a campaign to quickly triage and neutralize new threats that fit the same profile. It's about working smarter, not harder. - **Reduced Analyst Fatigue:** This is the big one. When your team understands the broader context, the work becomes more meaningful and less chaotic. They're not just clicking through alerts; they're actively hunting down a known adversary. That's a much more engaging and sustainable way to work. ### Practical Steps for Your Team Making the switch isn't just a philosophical exercise. It requires a practical change in your workflows. Here are a few steps you can take today: 1. **Start with Your Data:** Look back at your last few months of phishing reports. Can you group them into clusters based on shared characteristics? You might be surprised at how many seemingly random emails were actually part of the same operation. 2. **Invest in the Right Tools:** Your security stack needs to support campaign-level analysis. This means having a platform that can correlate data, track attacker infrastructure, and provide a timeline of activity. 3. **Train Your Team to Think Bigger:** Encourage your analysts to ask "what's the campaign?" instead of just "what's this email?" This simple question can change their entire approach to an investigation. ### The Bottom Line The era of treating phishing as a series of one-off incidents is over. It's inefficient, exhausting, and leaves you vulnerable to sophisticated attacks. By adopting a campaign-based mindset, you're not just improving your visibility and response times; you're also giving your analysts a more strategic and rewarding role in the fight. It's time to step out of the weeds and look at the battlefield from a higher vantage point. The attackers are thinking big, and so should you.