Social engineering

Humans will always be your weakest links for a target's security posture. The more you try to control the end users, the more they will try to bypass policies. The less controls you put in place, the less likely that the policies will be followed. This creates a double-edge sword when deciding how to protect end users from cyber threats. Hackers know this and target end users in various ways that focus on compromising a key characteristic of the average user, which is trust.

Social engineering is the art of manipulating people into performing actions of divulging information. Many client-side attacks are based on tricking an end user into exposing their systems to an attack. Social engineering can range from calling somebody while pretending to be an authorized employee to posting a link on Facebook that claims to be a service while really being a means to compromise the client.

Best practices for launching a successful social engineering attack is taking the time to understand...