Cheating is a kind of fraud or attempts to get dishonest advantages in an academic institution, it has been increasing dramatically for the last 50 years with the growth of technology. In some countries, this phenomenon has changed to a problematic factor in schools. Plagiarism is also considered as a type of cheating if it occurs intentionally. More efforts are made to mitigate the severity of cheating in an academic institution using technological-based devices. Besides, technology has an effective role in the detection of plagiarism by several detection platforms, however, still, there are some types of plagiarism which cannot be detected by these platforms efficiently, that authors should treat honestly during his/her scientific writing. This work aims to conceptualize and characterize cheating and plagiarism in an academic institution, also it is tried to indicate the relationship of cheating and plagiarism that in which cases, plagiarism becomes cheating. To achieve the purposes, relevant literature including scientific papers, monographs, reports, and authorized website were reviewed, and the literature output are integrated with the observation and experience of author during the teaching and learning in academic institutions.The findings and direct observation from close contact of classrooms show that cheating is felt mostly in classes with large numbers of students, that institution policy, instructor control, and using of technology have the most effect on the controlling cheating. Plagiarism as academic dishonesty is a widespread phenomenon among the students and even the authors. In some cases, the poor understanding of students and authors in scientific writing rules causes plagiarism and is measurable by some available detection platforms.