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Social Engineering 101

social engineering

Social Engineering 101

Hackers are known for using various tactics to prey on you or any other user online. So if you think the cause of your breach of security would be bad website, firewall or VPN, think again. There’s a high chance, your next security problem will be caused by hackers exploiting. It’s much easier to fool someone to open their email and take advantage of their vulnerability then directly attack network connection or web application. What is actually perceived as social engineering? It’s the art of perception influence and increase in social status by the use of your body language consciously and changing your self image in order to achieve techniques of manipulation to your advantage.

There’s a 30% chance that your business will experience some type of data breaching in next 2 to 3 years. Data breaches are very very expensive for companies. Last year, a single data breach could cost company almost $ 4 million dollars. Hacking is problem that keeps growing and in order to avoid getting hacked you need to understand 3 basic types of social engineering tactics so you can also warn your work team. There are phone, in person and digital tactics. When it comes to in person tactics there’s a few common that you need to be aware of. For example if you leave opened doors in your company someone could just slip through them. Cable guys are very common to. A guy comes to your company pretending he is service technician so he can gain closer business access. Try not to leave any type of devices lying around like USB drives, hard disks or DVD’s. Some people can be tempted to plug in and open to see what’s on it. Be aware of employing people who are suspicious. They can have malicious purposes to incorporate inside your business for the purpose of gaining more access on site.

We can experience phone social engineering in the form of panic or donations. We can experience panic when a person calls and pretends to be some kind of support asking for remote access or resetting your password. People can also call you and pretend they are some type of authority, managers for example and sound angry to make you feel intimidated.

Digital form of social engineering is I think the worst one. Phishing is tactic when someone can create fake website, copying the famous brand to get your trust. For example someone creates fake login page for Facebook and when you enter your login name and password that information is immediately sent to the hacker. You can also get hacked when receiving emails in the name of your friend for example. If you click on it an download the file it could contain virus inside. The good news is that 90% of those data breaches could actually be prevented if you know how. It’s important to use extended encryption as well as give training to your employees.