How to avoid social engineering attacks

Social engineering is a method of obtaining confidential information by psychologically manipulating or deceiving people to pursue a certain course of action. It is a popular tactic among hackers as it is easier to exploit human psychology rather than hacking a network or looking for security vulnerabilities.

The following are the most common forms of digital social engineering assaults:

Phishing

Phishing is by far the most common form of social engineering attack. This method uses deceptive emails and websites to obtain sensitive information or data, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details.

Spear Phishing

Spear phishing is an email scam targeted towards a specific individual, organization or business. Hackers obtain private information by researching the background of individuals and companies on social media and corporate websites. This information is used to convince the victim to that the mail has come from a trusted source. 

Baiting

Baiting attacks uses false promises to lure users into a trap. Baits can be in the form of physical devices such as a USB drive or online methods like free downloads or songs which turns out to contain malicious software.

For example, attackers leave the bait, like a malware-infected flash drive in conspicuous areas like elevators, or bathrooms of the targeted company where the potential victims are certain to see them. If any employee picks up the USB and plugs into a computer, then the attacker can easily gain access to the whole network.

Scareware

Scareware is a deceptive malware that uses alarming warnings to report fake malware infections or claim the victims' accounts has been compromised. This forces the victim to buy fraudulent cyber security software or divulge private details.

Following measures can help preempt and prevent social engineering attacks:

• Always avoid sharing information that could clue hackers in on your passwords.

• Use passphrases which is a series of random words or a sentence to set a password. They are much easier to remember and type, but still hard for cyber attackers to hack.

• Set your email filters to high which helps to determine whether an email is legitimate or not, thus preventing social engineering attacks.

• Using 2-factor authentication acts like a second form of identification which greatly decreases the chance of a hacker gaining access to sensitive information.

• Teach employees about social engineering attacks in order to prevent cyber security incidents.

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Rakesh Soni is CEO of LoginRadius, a leading provider of cloud-based digital identity solutions. The LoginRadius Identity Platform serves over 3,000 businesses and secures one billion digital identities worldwide. LoginRadius has been named as an industry leader in the customer identity and access management space by Gartner, Forrester, KuppingerCole, and Computer Weekly. Connect with Soni on LinkedIn or Twitter.