Social Engineering: How Hackers trick people, not just Systems.

 When we think of hackers, we often imagine them breaking through firewalls or exploiting software vulnerabilities. But many of today's most successful cyberattacks don't target computers, but they target people. This tactic is called Social Engineering, and it remains one of the most dangerous and effective tools in a hackers toolkit. Social Engineering uses manipulation and deception to trick people into giving away access, data, or money. It works a lot because the strongest security system can fail if someone inside opens the door. 

This social Engineers try to manipulate people into performing actions or revealing confidential information. Taking advantage of emotions like trust, fear, or urgency to bypass security controls. It often starts with information gathering, like learning employees names, roles, or habits, before crafting a believable story or message. These tactics are through email, phone calls, text messages, social media, or in person interactions.

Some of the Engineering attacks are Phishing, Vishing, Smishing, pretexting, and tailgating. Here is a few way to defend against it. Slow down when interacting with others to catch strange patterns that might give them a way. In interactions through email or text look for bad grammar, or something in the words that may be off. Educating your team on Social Engineering is the biggest help since they are the one's these hackers try to attack. Never sharing any personal or login info with others no matter the urgency is a good way to prevent it.

Technology alone isn't enough to protect us. Hackers know that people are often the weakest link, which is why social engineering remains such a common tactic. The best defense is awareness and vigilance, when we learn to recognize the signs, we make ourselves much harder to fool. By combining smart habits with strong technical strong technical safeguards, we can shut the door on social engineers, before they even get a foot it.

Sources:
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/social-engineering

- Joshua Xiong