Social Engineering by Anthony Ricigliano

Oct. 3, 2011 - PRLog -- Anthony Ricigliano - Read Anthony Ricigliano Latest News: Just when you thought you had your company resources locked down tight, a new type of security breach rears its ugly head. Social engineering is taking corporate theft to a personal level. Unlike a traditional hacker who works from a remote area to slip through your electronic defenses without any desire to walk through your actual doors, social engineers use both low- and high-tech strategies to exploit any weakness in your “human firewall.”

By launching an unrelenting assault on any weaknesses in your processes or employees, these unscrupulous groups or individuals almost always find a way in before they’re detected, if they’re detected at all. However, all is not lost. The best protection against social engineering attacks is to educate your employees about this growing threat in addition to developing a strong security program that takes every possible weakness into account.

What Exactly is a Social Engineering Attack?

Social engineering looks for any weakness, no matter how small, in your human firewall. This multi-dimensional approach uses the following strategies to gain entry into your organization either physically or virtually:

• Use small pieces of information as building blocks to learn even more
• Repetitive attacks
• Leverage technology
• Use of social skills and knowledge of basic human psychology

Social engineers are patient and detail oriented. They run through an endless cycle of finding information, developing a plan based on that information, executing the attack, and analyzing any new information. Each time, any new knowledge is used as a launch platform for the next cycle of attacks. This continues until the individual or group breaks into your facility, gets caught, or gives up. Needless to say, they rarely give up.

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Today’s businesses are grappling to stay ahead of the daily changes brought on by the evolution of technology. It’s a challenging environment but one where Anthony Ricigliano thrives. With 25 years of integrating the latest technological advances.....