5 Common Social Engineering Attacks – How Can You Beware Of These

When you talk about ransomware attacks, the root cause of the majority of them is typically the tactical use of social engineering.

Usually leveraged by cyber criminals, this form of cyber attack includes manipulating an employee or employees in order to gain access to your organisation’s private information and corporate systems.

Since social engineering takes advantage of human nature’s inclination to trust, it’s one of the easiest ways for hackers to get hold of your business systems. After all, why would someone put in their time and efforts to try and guess your password when they can simply get it from you?

With this being the case, it becomes important for your company to ensure that they’re seeking assistance from a professional IT support company like Redpalm. In doing so, not only will you be able to secure your systems and networks but also keep these threats at bay!

If you’re not sure as to which social engineering attacks your business could be vulnerable to, then you’ve come to the right place.

Here we’ve mentioned the top five attacks and the top three strategies you could leverage to protect your business.

1. Phishing

One of the most common tactics leveraged by cyber criminals, phishing attacks usually take place in the form of chat, websites designed to imitate the real organisation and system, web ads or email.

These attacks are crafted in such a way that they often deliver a sense of importance and urgency. Not only that, the phishing emails shared by ransomware attackers typically appear to be sent by the government or some large scale corporation; these sometimes also include the same branding and logos.

2. Baiting

Just like phishing attacks, baiting also involves the hackers offering your employees something enticing in exchange for sensitive and confidential information.

The “bait” here is often offered in various forms – both in digital like a movie or music download and physical like a flash drive labelled ‘Executive Salary Summary’ which is left on the employees desk to find out when they’ve reached the workplace.

Once they accept the bait, malicious software is transferred directly into your computers and networks.

3. Quid Pro Quo

This form of social engineering attack is similar to both phishing and baiting attacks.

In a quid pro quo cyber attack, you receive a request to share your private information but in exchange for a specific service. For instance, your employee may get a phone call from the cyber criminal as a tech expert providing free IT support services but for that, they’ll have to share their login credentials.

4. Pretexting

In this social engineering attack, the cyber attacker develops a false sense of trust with your employees by imitating another employee or a higher authority within your organisation – this is basically their approach to get hold of your confidential information.

For instance, an attacker might share a chat message or email with you as if they were the head of your IT solutions department who requires information regarding your corporate audit.

5. Tailgating

Tailgating is an attack where an unauthorised person actually follows your employee to a restricted system or corporate area.

A common example of this form of social engineering attack is when the attacker calls an employee to hold the door because they’ve forgotten their card. Another example is when the attacker asks to “borrow” your employees laptop or computer for sometime. This is when they quickly gain access to your data and insert malicious software into it.

How to Prevent Your Business from Falling Prey to Social Engineering Attacks

Here are the top three ways through which you can protect your business and other confidential data from cyber attacks:

1. Antivirus Software Installation

In order to protect your organisation and its private information from cyber criminals, you should begin with the installation of antivirus software.

As the name suggests, antivirus software is particularly designed to identify and get rid of malware and viruses from your systems. It doesn’t stop here though; it can also protect your networks from keyloggers, rootkits, worms, spyware, trojan horses, adware, ransomware and backdoors.

Additionally, there are certain products available on the market that are specifically created to identify attacks like social engineering techniques, DDoS (distributed denial-of-service), identity theft, phishing attacks and more.

2. Network Firewall Installation

When it comes to safeguarding your company, along with antivirus software, it’s equally important to install a network firewall in your systems.

Usually deployed as an appliance on the network, these are designed to keep tabs on the incoming and outgoing traffic on the basis of certain configurable rules. What’s more, they also offer extra functionality like VPN (virtual private network) for employees working remotely.

3. Patch and Password Management

After the installation of antivirus software and network firewall, the next layer in your organisation’s security protocol should be “patch management”.

Cyber attackers usually come up with attacks based on the vulnerabilities of the software being used in your company. As these opportunities are exploited, your software vendor updates the application to get rid of them.

Therefore, leveraging outdated software products can leave your company open to various security threats.

This is where it becomes important to have robust solutions in place that can easily automate patch management. Having said that, it’s also vital to have password management tools in place. These will enable your employees to keep a record of all their passwords in a secured place and in case their account is compromised, they can quickly change their passwords.

Conclusion

While it isn’t possible to completely safeguard your business from potential cyber attacks, there are certainly a lot of ways that you can leverage to identify the threats beforehand.

Make sure you stay vigilant at all times and always keep your business in the driver’s seat!