Cybersecurity and GRC terminology: English to Mexican Spanish
Use this guide when translating cybersecurity, privacy, audit, and GRC content for professionals in Mexico. It describes professional usage, not word-for-word equivalence.
Edition 2026.3. The companion guide, Spanish to English, lives on the Spanish version of this page. If something here is not how you would say it, tell us.
Legal note: Legal terms are date-sensitive, and this guide is not legal advice. Verify the current official instrument, authority, and procedure before relying on a legal translation.
How to use this guide
The default register is formal Mexican professional writing: security policies, audit reports, regulatory material, technical documentation, and professional training. Team chat, job titles, product names, commands, and quoted interface text may retain more English.
- Translate: Mexican professional writing normally uses the Spanish term.
- Keep in English: The English borrowing is the normal specialist term in Mexico.
- Context-dependent: The correct form changes with technical sense, register, organization, or jurisdiction.
- Official name or acronym: Preserve the official name, designation, or working acronym.
- Legal term, date-sensitive: Use the wording of the governing instrument and verify the current official text.
Consistency applies to the same sense, register, jurisdiction, and grammatical use. It does not require different concepts to share one translation.
Terms
phishing
→phishingKeep in EnglishAll cybersecurity registers
Mexican professional and institutional writing retains phishing. Suplantación de identidad may explain part of the technique but is not an exact replacement and also overlaps with spoofing and identity fraud. In Spanish, use el phishing.
Sources: CONDUSEF fraud guidance
That is not how I would say it
spear phishing
→spear phishingContext-dependentPractitioner and explanatory writing
Retain spear phishing in specialist prose and team dialogue. Use the descriptive phishing dirigido only when the source means targeted phishing rather than the fixed attack label.
Evidence basis: Professional usage judgment; no legal force is claimed.
That is not how I would say it
targeted phishing
→phishing dirigidoTranslateDescriptive attack language
Use this descriptive mapping when the source emphasizes that phishing is directed at a target without necessarily invoking the fixed specialist label spear phishing.
Evidence basis: Professional usage judgment; no legal force is claimed.