Understanding Social Engineering Threats

In a perfect world — mature processes, effective controls, security aware workforce — why do you need security professionals? Well, let us state the obvious: security threats are forever brewing globally, always changing, and continuously evolving and we need all the help we can get.

August 6 is National Social Engineering Day — a day dedicated to bringing awareness to a common threat — “Social Engineering.”

By definition, social engineering is the tactic of manipulating, influencing, or deceiving a victim in order to gain control over a computer system, or to steal personal and financial information. Attackers leverage a wide range of tactics, take advantage of our courteousness, and fake urgent scenarios to simply obtain unauthorized access to a system or facilities. It is a form of persuasion to make a belief in untrue situations.

Types of social engineering attacks are many ranging from phishing, tailgating, smishing, quid pro quo, vishing, and spoofing, to name a few. It is fair to say that EVERYONE is a potential target and we must remain diligent to protect what is important.

Social engineering attacks are real and, in some cases, globally impacting. Some examples are the $100M Google and Facebook phishing scam, the White House hack (more mischief than malice), persuasive email phishing attack imitating US Department of Labor, Microsoft 365 phishing scams that steal user credentials, and much more.

At Locus Robotics, we pride ourselves in our commitment to security, compliance, risk mitigation, and employee security awareness initiatives. Employees are the front line of defense and we must empower them with tools and knowledge to be better prepared for the unexpected. That is accomplished in many ways — primarily through continuous training, simulated social engineering attacks, visibility of attack trends, and knowing what vulnerabilities exist and how to mitigate them.

The more we know, the more effective we are. We all have to do our part in the global fight against malicious users whose primary goal is to steal, gain unauthorized access, and create havoc.

Join Locus Robotics, and the many across the globe, to increase awareness of security threats during this National Social Engineering day.To find out more about our stance on cybersecurity, please visit our Trust Center.