A new survey shows that 47 percent of organizations have experienced a vishing (voice phishing) or social engineering attack via their voice networks in the past year.

The study by voice traffic protection specialist Mutare also finds most are unaware of the volume of unwanted phone calls traversing their network, or the significance of threats lurking in unwanted traffic, which includes robocalls, spoof calls, scam calls, spam calls, spam storms, vishing, smishing and social engineering.

The latest quarterly threat report from Abnormal Security shows that increasingly sophisticated and novel socially engineered email attacks that bypass legacy defenses are driving 50 percent higher engagement than traditional email attacks such as credential phishing.

The report also shows that between the first week of July 2020 and the first week of April 2021, the percentage of companies across industries getting hit with vendor email compromise (VEC) attacks increased nearly 120 percent.

With companies relying more on technology, such as web applications, third-party solutions, and cloud computing than ever before, corporate cybersecurity has had to become the backbone of modern businesses. In the presence of remote work environments where IoT security has never been more vulnerable, companies need to effectively and quickly adapt to the rapidly evolving methods and techniques that hackers are beginning to employ.

Business vulnerabilities like a weak human firewall could lead to an increased susceptibility to a variety of cybersecurity attacks, such as ransomware and DDOS attacks. But despite all of these challenges, comprehensive and reliable cybersecurity solutions are very much achievable when approached correctly. In order to protect yourself against contemporary security threats, however, one must first understand the threats and risks they are trying to prevent and mitigate.

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: