Is Social Engineering A Valuable Weapon For Cyber Criminals?

The high rate of Cyberattacks via Social Engineering has significantly impacted businesses and individuals, leading to a study to understand this phenomenon. Cybera elaborates more on this subject. 

What Do We Understand By Social Engineering?

Social Engineering is a series of mental manipulation methods used on a targeted victim, which makes the person carr out decisions with thinking or questioning. 

By generating confidence in the victim by the cybercriminal, it is much easier and more effective to obtain access credentials to Information Systems.

The consequences of an attack using Social Engineering techniques directed against an organization are devastating. For the attacker, it means spending time investigating the organization or company and the employees and collaborators who will be attacked in greater depth.

With this investigation, they will discover the weakest link in the company that could give the attacker access to the Information System.

How to Deal with this Type of Cyberattack?

To deal with this type of attack, it is necessary to take a series of measures, mechanisms, or processes. According to the experts on the subject, the essential thing in this type of case is the continuous training given in the organizations, which will be an effective tool a priori to avoid or reduce attacks of this nature.

Something exciting is that a study was developed, based on this objective, to determine if it is possible to fight against this type of psychological manipulation technique. On the contrary, the staff should be considered the permanent weak point in the organization.

Carrying out this study meant delving into Social Engineering and analyzing it from a Legal, Psychological, Business, and Cybersecurity point of view.

They also carried out a study of statistics on cybercrime and the methods used in cybercrimes to obtain a complete view and at the same time know how these incidents were treated.

The point of view of organizations is also vital concerning cyberattacks using Social Engineering techniques. For this, two surveys based on two hypotheses were carried out, which would help to clarify whether education and training in organizations are viable as a preventive measure.

One of the hypotheses is about the idea that employees over 45 are more likely to be victims of deception through Social Engineering, due to lack of habit in the use of technological means and lack of training in a culture of cybersecurity, by the organization in which they work.

The second hypothesis refers to the fact that cybersecurity training reduces attacks caused by Social Engineering techniques by 50%.

One of the surveys was directed to any company that had suffered such attacks. The other was directed to a controlled group of companies or organizations dedicated to responding to cybersecurity incidents.

The objective was to find common elements to help develop crime prevention programs through Social Engineering.

This study shows that the surveys carried out to companies dedicated to responding to cybersecurity incidents are the only reliable ones. The others confirm the daunting number of victims by Social Engineering.

There is always something to do; therefore, many experts have proposed different preventive measures, and one of them is letting companies like Cybera provide professional help. 

Basically, Social Engineering is a deception technique so that the attacked person delivers personal and confidential information to the attacker, and is based on using the user's vulnerabilities and their little knowledge of the latest technologies since it advances at high speed. Many users do not know the best way to protect their information.

According to Kaspersky, a cybersecurity expert, almost all cyber attacks have some type of Social Engineering.

Most experts agree that protection against social engineering begins with education; otherwise, we will always be vulnerable to these types of attacks.

Cybera is a company that has been Disrupting financially motivated cybercrime since 2020. We’ve helped businesses and individuals with rapid legal response to stop stolen funds.