Social Engineering Prevention

Social engineering is the term used for a broad range of malicious activities accomplished through human interactions.  Social engineering uses psychological manipulation to trick users into making security mistakes or giving away sensitive information.

In a social engineering attack, an attacker uses human interaction to obtain or compromise information about an organization or its computer systems.  An attacker may seem unassuming and respectable, possibly claiming to be a new employee, repair person or researcher and even offering credentials to support that identity.  By asking questions, the attacker may be able to piece together enough information to infiltrate an organization’s network.  

For effective social engineering prevention, the perfect solution is PhishingBox.  Phishing is a primary form of social engineering. Phishing attacks use email or malicious websites to solicit personal information by posing as a trustworthy organization.  For example, an attacker may send email seemingly from a reputable financial institution that requests account information, often suggesting that there is a problem.

The following are the five most common forms of digital social engineering assaults:

• Baiting | Baiting attacks use a false promise to pique a victim’s greed or curiosity.  They lure users into a trap that steals their personal information or inflicts their systems with malware.
• Scareware | Scareware involves victims being bombarded with false alarms and fictitious threats.  Users are deceived to think their system is infected with malware, prompting them to install software that has no real benefit or is malware itself.
• Pretexting | An attacker obtains information through a series of cleverly crafted lies.  The scam is often initiated by a perpetrator pretending to need sensitive information from a victim so as to perform a critical task.  All sorts of pertinent information and records are gathered using this scam.
• Phishing | As one of the most popular social engineering attack types, phishing scams are email and text message campaigns aimed at creating a sense of urgency, curiosity or fear in victims.  It then prods them into revealing sensitive information, clicking on links to malicious websites or opening attachments that contain malware.
• Spear phishing | This is a more targeted version of the phishing scam whereby an attacker chooses specific individuals or enterprises.  They tailor their messages based on characteristics, job positions and contacts belonging to their victims to make their attack less conspicuous. 

PhishingBox demonstrates how to prevent the most common social engineering attacks.  Social engineering attacks are not only becoming more common against businesses and organizations, they’re also increasingly more sophisticated.  With hackers devising ever-more clever methods for fooling employees and individuals into handing over valuable company data, businesses must use due diligence in an effort to stay two steps ahead of cyber criminals.

PhishingBox can educate companies, organizations, employees and end users on how to better recognize social engineering efforts and prevent these attacks from succeeding.  Social engineering is a catch-all term in the cybersecurity industry and one that has taken on new meaning in the internet age.  In fact, some of the earliest forms of this type of cyber-attack date back to the beginning of the worldwide web.  The goal of most hackers is simply to make money, although some hackers have the additional goals of damaging a company or organization’s reputation or ability to carry out operations.

Contact a member of the PhishingBox team today for a demo and 7-day free trial by calling (877) 634-6847.