Social engineering attacks are unfortunately very common, and preventing these attacks should be a major concern of any insider risk management program.
An organizational insider risk management strategy is comprised of several different elements. Each of these elements strengthens the work of your team as a whole and helps to secure critical and sensitive organization data. As part of a developed insider risk management strategy, special consideration should also be given to social engineering attacks. While this may seem to be a job for your general cybersecurity team, your insider risk management team actually plays a critical role in protecting your organization from social engineering attacks. Securing data is the goal, and the perpetrator of a social engineering attack can pose as one of your employees to steal that data. Here’s what you need to know to help your team protect your organization from social engineering attacks.
Identify What Social Engineering Attacks Look Like
Social engineering attacks take several forms and it’s important to recognize them. The most common forms are as follows:
- Phishing: the attacker poses as an authority figure, source, or established website to fool the victim.
- Clickbait: the attacker sends a malicious link with an enticing headline, usually relating to entertainment of some form.
- Fake Email: the attacker hacks the email ID of a person trusted by the victim and threatens them into releasing the desired information.
- Pretexting: the attacker pretexts themselves as an authentic entity in order to access user information and gain access to sensitive data.
Of these, pretexting is the most dangerous and most common social engineering attack that your organization will need to combat.
Educate Your Employees
Just as in several other areas of insider risk management, education and training is the key to helping your organization combat social engineering attacks. Your employees are your first line of defense, so ensure that best practices are communicated clearly with them. Spam filters, regular password changes, keeping software and applications up-to-date, and just generally staying mindful of the emails being received on a daily basis are all topics that should be communicated with your team and re-emphasized from time to time.
Recognize the Red Flags
If an attacker does manage to get a hold of credentials, it is only a matter of time before they use them to get the data they are looking for. And this is where the insider risk management team can play a huge role in stopping a potential security breach from developing into a major event. Monitoring systems, when designed with intention, will raise a red flag whenever something unusual is occurring within your network. It is the responsibility of your team to recognize these red flags and take prompt action as needed. A quick response can help protect your organization from the more serious repercussions of a social engineering attack.
Contact ITMG to Develop Strategies and Protocols Designed to Help Your Company Mitigate Your Insider Risk
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