What Are Social Engineering Hacks?
Orange County managed IT services are an essential tool in protecting your business technologically, but also in terms of internal best practices. Social engineering hacks are essentially savvy con-artists using human nature as an information-gathering tool.
Overcoming Social Engineering Hacks
Look at this video where a woman puts the noises of a baby crying on in the background and poses as a man’s overwhelmed wife. Of course, the woman at the cellphone company gives out the personal information of the targeted individual. How could she not?
Well, through policies that have ironclad restrictions, and are well-considered beforehand. Following, we’ll go over several key means of avoiding social engineering hacks:
Phishermen
Orange County managed IT services providers can help keep you apprised of the newest phishing techniques. In brief, what happens is that people use sneaky means of collecting personal information from either direct or indirect targets. So, for example, someone in payroll might get an email from the boss, but it’s really a phishing scam.
The real email address is “[email protected]”, but the phishing scam says: “[email protected]”. See how subtle that is? This is just a basic example; there are all kinds of phishing scams out there, and you want to be up on best practices to avoid the majority of them.
Baited Traps and Quid Pro Quo
Baited traps are essentially where you see some pop-up that says: “Go Here To Watch X Free”, or “Get money this crazy way!”, or any of countless similar examples.
Quid Pro Quo is when you encounter something online or are reached out to with an offer of a gift, provided you give up some little tidbit of information like a bank number.
Establishment of a False Pretext
False pretext establishment is when someone acts like your friend so they can sneakily extract information from you gradually. They’ll put up a profile and ask a bunch of fake small-talk questions then say something like: “So where are you from and how old are you?”. Small talk then resumes until they ask another personal question. There are other pretext situations as well— consultation helps you identify them.
Corporate Espionage: Piggybacking
Someone without a keycard may follow an employee into your business right behind them as they badge in. This is piggybacking. Have strict policies against it.
Operating Securely
At Advanced Networks, our Orange County managed IT services team can help protect your business against piggybacking, pretext hacking, quid pro quo and other baiting and phishing scams–as well as many more impacting social engineering hacks. Contact us now and let us secure your business.
