Social engineering is one of the biggest threats to cyber security. It exploits

Question

Social engineering is one of the biggest threats to cyber security. It exploits the vulnerabilities in human behaviour to gain access or retrieve information. Social engineering is the manipulation of humans to obtain unauthorized access to information or information systems.

Technical security measures do not help in countering social engineering. No matter how much an organisation invests in security tools, products and professionals, if the human factor is compromised, then all other security measures are useless. A different set of tools, training, procedures and policies are required to protect from social engineering cyber-threats.

For this Discussion, you examine the possible social engineering threats to your organisation and advise on proactive plans to reduce the possibility of such attacks.

Briefly describe your work environment or another one that you are familiar with.

Describe at least two possible social engineering types of attacks that may threaten your work environment.

Analyse the potential damage of these attacks if they occurred.

Analyse the possible causes of these attacks and recommend a plan for avoiding their occurrence.

Explanation / Answer

Before starting and diving into the details, what is social engineering security threat?

It is mechanism of gaining access to sensitive data either personal or professional, buildings, internal systems or data in general by carefully abusing human psychology instead of physical breaking in or complex algorithmic hacking and penetration.

“Instead of trying to hacking the system, I Shall hack the person responsible for that system”

Briefly describe your work environment or another one that you are familiar with.

Analyze the possible causes of these attacks

Inside work places, employer(s) and employee(s) are pretty confident (or over), on the deployed security measures in and out involving digital badges, secure laptops, organization wide disabled USB and so on. But we tend to overlook the most important entity in all of this- “YOU”. Humans in general are social and careful about others especially in corporate circle where decency and respect is at prime (and it must be). But some social engineers can hijack these qualities of trust and respect and turn it upside down using some very easy to understand ways.

“Blend in and tailgate, you swipe right and I move left that’s, how your security going to break”

Wow, 45% off on the sneakers which I was trying to find from past month.

But why it’s asking for permission to install some software? Who cares! Let’s carry on and bring in that shiny pairs of shoes.

Well, whole world’s combined power of antivirus, malware and so on cannot save your organization breach, if your employee is not able to resist and judge the common temptation and intuition to detect such thing.

Once installed that software could gather sensitive information, or just slow down you precious computer and hamper your productivity or do million other thing which are not going you and your employer.

Yeah, sure!

Voila! Now I am an employee and can get in the places I don’t belong, do thing which I don’t have access to.

But wait, was that person even an employee of your company?

I don’t even have to explain the consequences of such actions and you might think that only a fool can do that, but what if I have a replica of temporary card and then I ask you the same question, will you help a needy fellow employee or show him your smug face.

Now it’s not so easy!

Recommend a plan for avoiding their occurrence.

Want to avoid the blunders above? Start teaching and putting your employees through some real life tests of judgement calls and confusion. Then practice some more and then some more.

“Customer is asking for access to file Z,” which he’s not authorized to, but Mr. Jackson says customer is god!” what to do????

Better way is to educate your employees to recognize the patterns and scenarios where, people can disguise and take advantage of your shopping pattern, their behavioral patterns etc. and then carry out some drills, some pre-determined and some not. Self-awareness, institution and judgement is the key to reduce the social engineering threats.

Some other common and popular ways are keeping antivirus and malware updated, keep an eyes on spams, attentive to the help desk calls and off-course that 45% discounted shiny sneakers.

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