Trust is the weapon of choice for modern cyber criminals. They don’t need Hollywood-level hacking when a well-timed email, a believable phone call or a compromised vendor can give them the keys to the kingdom.
These attackers know that the natural human tendency to trust, communicate and be helpful is the weakest link in any security chain. That’s why social engineering attacks exploit your confidence to manipulate you into divulging sensitive information or taking actions that compromise security.
Understanding how criminals exploit trust is crucial for your role in protecting yourself and your organization.
Read: Defending Against Social Engineering Attacks
How Attackers Exploit Trust – and Why They Succeed
Cyber criminals study their targets and know their habits; they know where they go on the web and what advertisements they click on. Worse, they can find personal details on social media.
From there, they craft deeply convincing messages that get responses. Sometimes, the message mimics real ones to appear as if they came from someone you already know and trust. At other times, the message seems like a plausible request, such as your bank contacting you to secure your account. No matter what, the message creates a sense of urgency and fear to rush you into clicking a link or providing credentials before you have time to think.
That’s why when we receive an email, a phone call or a link from someone posing as an authority figure, it doesn’t cross our minds that these messages could be harmful. When everything looks authentic, even the most cautious person can be deceived.
Examples of Social Engineering Tactics
This manipulation of trust is what makes these attacks so effective and dangerous. They don’t target technology – they target people and their willingness to trust.
- Phishing: This is the most prevalent form of social engineering. Phishing messages are fake yet convincing messages that impersonate executives, vendors or internal systems to trick recipients into clicking a link, opening an attachment or sending money or data.
- Business email compromise (BEC): These emails impersonate executives or partners, often via look-alike addresses or compromised accounts, to authorize wire transfers or sensitive requests.
- Vishing or smishing: These are voice calls or SMS that impersonate IT, banks or vendors to extract credentials or trigger financial actions.
Your Best Defenses to Spot and Avoid Deception
Forward-thinking organizations are adopting proactive IT and cybersecurity strategies. Focus on measures that reduce the attack surface created by trust and increase your organization’s ability to detect and respond:
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA): Enforce MFA for all high-value systems and privileged accounts. Even if a criminal steals your password, they can’t access your account without the second code.
- Least privilege: Implement role-based access controls (RBAC) to limit access to sensitive data.
- Employee awareness training: Empower your team to recognize and resist social engineering attempts with cybersecurity training.
- Zero-trust model: This modern mindset states that you should trust but verify. Ensure every user, device and access point is authenticated.
- Strong passwords: A compromised password on one site can be used to unlock all your accounts if you reuse it. Use strong, complex passwords that are different for every account.
- Update software: Regularly installing software and hardware updates removes any vulnerabilities that attackers could use to try and exploit alongside their social engineering efforts.
Your organization should also take a mindset of healthy skepticism and common sense:
- Pause: Cyber criminals want you to act fast. Take a moment to think critically, especially if the message is using urgent or fearful language. Know that a legitimate company will allow you time to verify the request.
- Don’t share: Never provide passwords, account numbers or other sensitive information via unsolicited text, email or phone call. Legitimate companies don’t ask for information this way.
- Verify: If you receive an urgent request for money or sensitive information, don’t respond. Instead, contact that alleged sender in a separate message to verify the request.
- Proofread: Check the sender’s email address for subtle misspellings or addresses from public domains pretending to be from a real company. Also scrutinize the language; professional communications rarely contain typos or awkward phrasing.
- Don’t open: Never open unsolicited attachments or click on links, as they could contain malware. Instead, hover your mouse over the link to see if the URL appears legitimate.
- Limit: Limit the amount of personal information you share online, as attackers can use these details to create highly personalized, believable messages.
How Thriveon Can Help
A fractional CIO can be instrumental in aligning cybersecurity with business strategy to ensure trust is built on verification, not assumption. At Thriveon, we help organizations eliminate uncertainty and build a proactive IT strategy that defends your business from today’s cyber landscape.
Schedule a meeting now for more information.