- Social engineering as a function, basis, or precursor to other more technical cyberattacks is widely undercounted.
- Hackers leverage social engineering in as much as 90% of all cyberattacks.
- Social engineering is effective because it relies on the human tendency to trust, fear, or oblige to orders. Two of the biggest cyberattacks of 2023 were caused by social engineering.
Social engineering is still one of the biggest challenges for organizations to overcome. Securing the IT infrastructure with the latest tools updated to thwart newly adopted cybercriminal tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) certainly matters.
But humans continue to be the weak(est) link in cybersecurity. Verizon noted in its 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report that 74% of total breaches were caused by human error. Of the 16,312+ security incidents Verizon analyzed, 5,199 resulted in data breaches. 10% and 17% of security incidents and data breaches, respectively, were driven by social engineering.
As one can imagine, the issue is more psychological than technical. So, much like humans’ repeated inability to fend off social engineers, let us take a jog down the basics of what social…
