If there’s one thing the big security breaches of the past few years have taught us, it’s that employees are just as critical to network security as technology.
Organisations often overlook the human fallibility factor and don’t train or engage their workforce in helping protect their sensitive information. This is the case despite heavy investment being made in the deployment of point products used to guard corporate networks when, in fact, combatting a wide range of security threats requires a strong combination of technology and user awareness.
Hacking techniques that focus on exploiting employees, such as social engineering, are certainly on the rise. Nearly half of UK enterprises have been the victim of 25 or more such attacks in the past two years, with spear phishing via email and social networks being the most common attack vectors. At an average cost of £15,000 per incident this is a threat businesses can ill-afford to ignore.
Once inside, the hacker can use a series of tools to work their way up the food chain to board-level staff, giving them unrestricted access to commercially sensitive data. But how do these attacks happen and what methods do hackers employ?
Unlike a brute force through the front door approach, social engineering attacks require more finesse and planning. Surveillance is the key to knowing a potential ‘mark’ and provides would-be hackers with answers to critical questions including:
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The human factor is so overlooked in so many cases, its quite disturbing.
Social Engineering as mentioned here is part of the issue yes as is poor policy, lack of education of policy and lack of resiliance. On occasion people just being daft too unfortuantely.
On the topic of Social Engineering - there is a blog post if it interests you http://wp.me/p1SUSa-5i