Social Engineering: Attacks, Techniques & Prevention Social engineering is the art of exploiting the human elements to gain access to un-authorized resources. Social engineers use a number of techniques to fool the users into revealing sensitive information. Organizations must have security policies that have social engineering countermeasures. What is Social Engineering? Social engineering is the … Read more
An attacker will look for targets of opportunity or potential victims who have the most to offer. Some common targets include receptionists, help desk personnel, users, executives, system administrators, and outside vendors. Let’s look at each and see why this is. Receptionists—one of the first people visitors see in many companies—represent prime targets. They see … Read more
Social engineering can have many potential outcomes on an organization, some obvious and some less so. It is important that you understand each of these, because they can have far-reaching effects: Economic Loss This one is fairly obvious. A social engineer may cause a company or organization to lose money through deception, lost productivity, or … Read more
People use social engineering to break into systems and attain information because it’s often the simplest way for them to get what they’re looking for. They’d much rather have someone open the door to the organization than physically break in and risk being caught. Security technologies such as firewalls and access controls won’t stop a … Read more