What is Social Engineering and How To Protect Yourself and Your Business?

Internet thieves find it less complicated to take advantage of human nature rather than to exploit security holes in their computer systems. Who did not receive, once, a telephone call from somebody informing us that our computer has issues and bugs to fix, or an e-mail from someone, out of the blue, declaring to be a distant relative and urgently seeking support in the form of financial contributions? The question is: how do you find out if those calls and emails are genuinely true? 

What Is Social Engineering?

Social engineering is a sort of information technology identity theft that includes manipulating people to complete specific actions that breach standard security measures. The bad guys depend on natural people's assistance to acquire accessibility to their computers, collect confidential information and/or spread scams. Techniques - such as e-mail hoaxes and phoney phone calls - are carried out to confidentially put in a malicious program on someone's computer or to adjust them into uncovering their passwords or other hypersensitive private information. 

What Are The Social Engineering Attacks and Exploit Techniques?

Social Engineering attacks take several approaches such as:

1. Familiarity Exploit: Making yourself comfortable to those that you need to exploit facilitates decreasing their safeguard. People respond in a different way to people they know, have spoken to or at least seen around a lot. People are far comfier reacting and undertaking requests by acquainted people than they are with complete strangers. As soon as you turn out to be familiar then you hit and dig into those secure areas.

2. Collecting and Using Information: information gathering is the key to success in social engineering. The more information you gather about your target, the more likely you are going to get what you want from them. Information gathering can be achieved on: 

• Social media (LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc).
• The parking lot where unlocked cars, or those which can be easily unlocked, might have security badges, uniforms, documents, Intel, smartphones, wallets and handbags, all types of useful goodies.
• Stuff in the target work environment (posters and prints, pictures, books, cards, notes, etc.)
• Inquiring their close friends and co-workers. Pretend to be a supervisor from another workplace or department.
• Tail them home or to their preferred places. Try to find out their patterns, interests, activities, spots they frequent etc.

3. Find a Job In The Target Place: get a job at your target company and take hold of all the information you can. The majority of small-medium size companies cannot spot warning signs when employing someone with malicious intention. Once you are there, you become more trusted. Thus, social engineering a co-worker would be as easy as ABC.

4. Reading through body language: body language can be used efficiently to make impressive connections to a target person. Breathing when they do, smile at the right moment, identify and adjust to their feelings, be friendly and well mannered but not too much so, if they seem anxious to help to make them cosy. if they are comfortable then exploit them, etc. Women can be excellent in social engineering by manipulating any men like flirting, dressing up sexy, behaving promiscuous, acting interested in you, blah, blah, blah...SEX!

5. Phishing: it is the deceptive process of sending emails purporting to be from trustworthy companies in order to stimulate individuals to uncover personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers, online. It happened that callers appearing as Microsoft associates tried to scam Canadian customers by providing "technical support" for non-existent computer errors. They milked naive victims out of hundreds, and often thousands of dollars by stating to them that their computers would crash if they didn't give them over to "tech support". The scammers often searched for bank card details by requesting the user to go to a particular website, where the data could possibly be "safely and securely" inserted. Other times, the user was requested to buy something, or for remote access to his/her computer to repair "critical technical problems". As outlined by Microsoft Canada, almost 80% of Canadians who got a fake Microsoft call fell victim somehow, and roughly one out of three receivers encountered computer issues following the phone call. 

So What Can You Do To Protect Yourself And Your Business From Social Engineering? 

Stay alert! You Should hardly ever rely on any unrequested phone calls or emails from persons providing assistance for computer problems or inquiring you to perform a particular action. Never stick to the caller or sender guidelines by logging on to a certain website, purchasing or setting up a software, sending money, or giving away any kind of your private information. Instruct your staff on the problem of social engineering to safeguard your company from potential attacks. Most of the scammers are likely to present as suppliers or entrepreneurs of companies so as to offer an employee at their targeted firm an instant reasoning to believe in them. If you're doubtful of a certain caller, it is advantageous to ask questions to confirm his/her identity. Likewise, steer clear of clicking on links that you receive in unsolicited emails; instead, hover over those links to find their full URLs, and visit the website addresses yourself to stay protected from falling victim to e-mail attacks.