Social Engineering A Significant Threat To Security

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Social Engineering

Manipulating users to gain information access through deceptive means. The fraud of course with band intent committed using methods which include tricks, bribes, lies, threats, blackmail, impersonation, and many others. The cybercriminals have relied on social engineering to trick the persons to reveal the relevant sensitive information against the company's policies, rules, and practices. The social Engineers know that stunts work, and are practical, as it exploits the natural tendency of personal trust.
It needs through authentication and specialized care, otherwise, impersonators succeed in their social engineering attacks.

The IT personnel especially those who maintain servers or systems are said to be most in-disciplinary with their lifestyle. Do you think it is their fault or the job requirement? They have got a big responsibility of keeping the business secure. They are not the only employees in the organizations, but, as not all staff members are technicals or have received security education. They have got much bigger responsibility on their shoulders.

Why Social Engineering attacks stood the test of time for decades?

• Intimidate the persons by telling emotional stories
• Encourage to bypass rules or appropriate verification for cost savings. Ask for exceptions to policies or procedures to circumvent existing controls
• Making urgent requests
• Impersonals dupe the persons, claiming to be from the company help desk or an authority like a manager. The confidence and the state of normalcy of the caller matters a lot in such attacks, which makes less likely to be questioned.
• Use social media to extract private information of staff members and further used it to persuade

Beware of Social Engineering Attacks

• Train the staff regularly and make them aware of such attacks.
• Create simulations using office 365 threat intelligence attacks simulator and train the employees how to deal with any such specific situations
• Make rules, so that staff personnel adhere to protocols without deviations