“Social Engineering” may be an unusual term for many, but it is widely known in this digital marketing era. To explain in layman terms it is one of those manipulation techniques that hackers use to trick their way into secured networks and systems. The type of information these hackers seeking can vary. Furthermore; they expertly can gain the access of your handhandled devices to secretly install malicious software, literally distroying your system.

How Does Social Engineering Attack Look Like?

Security is all about knowing what and who you trust. Ask any security professional and they will tell you that the weakest link in the security chain is the human who accepts the professionals at their face value.

It doesn’t matter how many locks you have installed on your doors/windows. It doesn’t matter having installed an high-tech alarm system, or having guard dogs, or have fenced up with barbed wire; if you trust the person at the gate who says he/she is the plumber guy and you let him/her in without checking to see if he/she is legitimate you are completely exposed to whatever risk it represents.

Your curiosity or taking advantage  of your trust these messages can:

• Ask you to download something which could be pictures, documents, music etc which will have some kind of malicious virus attached to it. Hence, you not only download the stuff, but you are actually downloading a “Malicious virus” in your system corrupting your system, your social media accounts, your email accounts, contacts and much more.
• Contains some link which is asking you to checkout because it is from some friend or colleague and out of curiosity you are opening it. You trust the link and the malware virus takes over your system hampering your each and everything.
• Using phishing attempts with a legitimate looking background. Usually, a phisher sends an e-mail, IM, comment, or text message that looks like coming from a known source such as bank, institute, some popular company etc. 
• Asking you to donate to their fundraiser event, with instructions on how to send the money. Preying on kindness and generosity, these phishers ask for aid or support naming under known disaster, charity campaigns etc. 

Tips to Remember About Social Engineering Attack

You Need To Slow Down

Hackers want you to act first and think later. If the message conveys a sense of urgency or uses high-pressure sales tactics be skeptical; never let their urgency influence your careful review.

Research About The Stuff You Have Received

Be suspicious of any unsolicited messages. If the Email looks like it is from a company you use, do your own research. Use a search engine to go to the real company’s site, or a phone directory to find their phone number.

Stay In Control 

Find out about the website yourself using a search engine you will browsing or if redirecting it to it. Hovering over links in email will show the actual URL at the bottom, but a good fake can still steer you wrong.

Email hijacking is rampant. Hackers, spammers, and social engineers taking over control of people’s email accounts (and other communication accounts) has become rampant. Once they control an email account, they prey on the trust of the person’s contacts. Even when the sender appears to be someone you know, if you aren’t expecting an email with a link or attachment check with your friend before opening links or downloading.

Beware of any download. If you don’t know the sender personally AND expect a file from them, downloading anything is a mistake.

Foreign offers are fake. If you receive an email from a foreign lottery or sweepstakes, money from an unknown relative, or requests to transfer funds from a foreign country for a share of the money it is guaranteed to be a scam.

How To Prevent Social Engineering Attacks?

What can you do to minimize the chances of yourself as an individual of falling a victim to these dirty schemes? Here are a few steps you can take:

DO NOT open emails in the spam folder or emails whose recipients you do not know.

DO NOT open attachments in emails of unknown origin.

Use a reputable antivirus software

Perform a regular backup to an external medium as well as have a backup on cloud 

After backing up, disconnect your drive. Current ransomware is known to encrypt your backup drive as well.
DO NOT pay the ransom. The reason why the criminals keep utilizing this form of blackmailing attacks is that people keep paying. To try to get your data back, consult a professional in your area.
What can your company do to prevent being victimized by these types of attacks?

Humans need to be trained – they are the weakest link. Companies should employ, at minimum, a bi-annual training geared towards each user group (end-users, IT staff, managers, etc.) so that everyone is aware of the latest attacks.
Employees should be tested by having an outside party conduct a social engineering test. These kinds of tests help keep the employee on their toes and more likely to avoid the attacks.
Since these attacks are on the rise, a number of new defenses have been developed. AppRiver is a great Spam and Virus email filter that can block a large number of phishing exploits before they even reach the internal servers.
If they happen to get through, an endpoint protection system that can block the latest malware is probably your best bet at stopping the attack.

How Can Discretemicros Can Help Your Company?

At Discretemicros, we leverage years of experience to test your organization- the weakest point of most companies – in the most practical way. Using ethical hacking methods, we’ll try to penetrate your organization through your employees using Remote or Onsite Social Engineering, or both.

Offering variety of services ranging from Development and Testing of Web applications to Desktop and Mobile applications, we do work on providing Hosting and Domain services along with SEO support.

The key strengths are Quality and Price which readily helps startups and enterprises in managing costs. The development team precisely studies and analyze the requirements and processes of our clients. And based on the feasibility adopts and implements the best possible solution to deliver the right products at the right time.

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