Social Engineering: Life Blood of Data Exploitation (Phishing)

What do Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Wayne Gacy, Dennis Rader, and Frank Abigail all have in common, aside from the obvious fact that they are all criminals?  They are also all master manipulators that utilize the art of social engineering to outwit their unsuspecting victims into providing them with the object or objects that they desire.  They appear as angels of light but are no more than ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing. There are six components of an information system: Humans, Hardware, Software, Data, Network Communication, and Policies; with the human being the weakest link of the six.

By Zachery S. Mitcham, MSA, CCISO, CSIH, VP and Chief Information Security Officer, SURGE Professional Services-Group
Social engineering is the art of utilizing deception to manipulate a subject into providing the manipulator with the object or objects they are seeking to obtain. Pretexting is often used in order to present a false perception of having creditability via sources universally known to be valid. It is a dangerous combination to be gullible and greedy. Social engineers prey on the gullible and greedy using the full range of human emotions to exploit their weaknesses via various scams, of which the most popular being phishing.  They have the uncanny ability to influence their victim to comply with their demands.

Phishing is an age-old process of scamming a victim out of something by utilizing bait that appears to be legitimate. Prior to the age of computing, phishing was conducted mainly through chain mail but has evolved over the years in cyberspace via electronic mail. One of the most popular phishing scams is the Nigerian 419 scam, which is named after the Nigerian criminal code that addresses the crime.

Information security professionals normally eliminate the idea of social norms when investigating cybercrime.  Otherwise, you will be led into morose mole tunnels going nowhere. They understand that the social engineering cybercriminal capitalizes on unsuspecting targets of opportunity. Implicit biases can lead to the demise of the possessor. Human behavior can work to your disadvantage if left unchecked. You profile one while unwittingly becoming a victim of the transgressions of another. These inherent and natural tendencies can lead to breaches of security. The most successful cybersecurity investigators have a thorough understanding of the sophisticated criminal mind.

Victims of social engineering often feel sad and embarrassed. They are reluctant to report the crime depending on its magnitude. And the CISO to comes the rescue! In order to get to the root cause of the to determine the damage caused to the enterprise, the CISO must put the victim at ease by letting them know that they are not alone in their unwitting entanglement.

These are some tips that can assist you with an anti-social engineering strategy for your enterprise: Employ Sociological education tools by developing a comprehensive Information Security Awareness and Training program addressing all six basic components that make up the information system. The majority of security threats that exist on the network are a direct result of insider threats caused by humans, no matter if they are unintentional or deliberate. The most effective way an organization can mitigate the damaged caused by insider threats is to develop effective security awareness and training program that is ongoing and mandatory.

Deploy enterprise technological tools that protect your human capital against themselves.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) serve as effective defensive tools that protect from the exfiltration enterprise data in the event that it falls into the wrong hands...[…] Read more »…..

This article first appeared in CISO MAG.

<Link to CISO MAG site: www.cisomag.com>

Study Shows Which Phishing Attacks are Most Successful

A new phishing study of six million users shows insurance organizations and not-for-profits lead all other industries with greater than thirty percent of users falling for baseline phishing tests.

The study shows these types of organizations rank higher (in the low 30 percentiles) than the overall average of 27 percent across all industries and size organizations. Large business services organizations had the lowest Phish-prone benchmark at 19 percent.

The Phish-prone percentage is determined by the number of employees that click a simulated phishing email link or open an infected attachment during a testing campaign using the KnowBe4 platform.

The study, drawn from a data set of more than six million users across nearly 11,000 organizations, benchmarks real-world phishing results. Results show a radical drop of careless clicking to just 13 percent 90 days after initial training and simulated phishing and a steeper drop to two percent after 12 months of combined phishing and computer based training (CBT).

The study anonymously tracks users by company size and industry at three points: 1) a baseline phishing security test, 2) results after 90 days of combined CBT and simulated phishing, and 3) the result after one year of combined CBT and phishing […] Read more »