How To Prevent Social Engineering Attacks?
Social Networking is in growing demand with several users at the last line of defense. Therefore, security teams must be mindful about every user’s activity because they need to interfere if required. However, being an end user, you need to be responsible to control different activities. Therefore, in this article, we will provide you the entire guide about different tips and tricks to prevent famous social engineering attacks.
Here, we will provide 10 power steps that your business can undertake to prevent victims from falling into social engineering attacks such as phishing, baiting as well as pre-texting. Some of them can be normal protections whereas others may be far-fetched ones. However, when it deals with a company’s sensitive facts, you ought to be careful.
10 Important Methods to Prevent Social Engineering Attacks
There are some methods which you can follow to evade famous social engineering attacks
Get Proactive Against Phishing
Phishing scams or emails are one of the most common types of famous social engineering attacks. Their main aim is simple. Just finding and manipulating private information. Phishing scams are basically a continuous and ever-changing technique that makes it very dangerous even for competent employees. They send phishing scams as official emails to steal confidential information. Framing these emails with fake brand value and bank style can catch the attention of the employees and as a result, they get into the trap. Therefore, always log in to the customer support or log in to that particular website to get proper authentication. Therefore, security assessments and employee education programme are important means to save your business from the apple attack of phishing emails.
Understand Pretext Attacks
Sometimes, hackers or cybercriminals may require one kind of information to breach through a sytem and pretexting is an important way to steal that information. Scammers or hackers always tend to generate a fake trust with their targets to get the information. Suppose, they often act as a representative of an IT audit firm trying to permit the security the staff so that they can get direct access. Therfore, to evade this, you need to recognize these kinds of emails. You need to understand the source of the email and also the content portrayed in the email.
Prevent Baiting Techniques
If you encounter a request for getting the login credentials in lieu to a download, that means you are seeing baiting. Therefore, always be careful with the user requests for sharing credentials. These kinds of social engineering hacking are used to expand the viruses and breaking into corporate systems.
Avoid Opening Emails From Unauthenticated Sources
Hackers sometimes use different contact lists to send suspicious emails from the sources which are known to the user. Maybe, you have received an email from an old college friend. Therefore, always try removing this kind of emails from your inbox. Else, you can also modify the settings to avoid receiving those types of emails in the future. In order to achieve this, set your spam filters to high mode. It prevents those messages from spamming your inbox. Therefore, always take into account to check them periodically since it is possible that the legitimate messages get trapped there.
Recognize the Scareware Techniques
Scareware is considered one of the most dangerous social engineering apple attack. You may sometimes receive different pop-ups implying that their device is getting infected with malware. Therefore, to evade this issue, you have to recognize the Scareware techniques. You might have received a link to download from that source. It is not at all safe to open the downloadable link. They might have sent you a file to download with some catchy headlines.
Unusual Curiosity
It’s human nature to be curious. That is the reason why social engineering attackers often take advantage of this unusual curiosity instinct. According to the latest study, this urge gives you a terrifying clarity. Also, the report suggests that a large number of people was found inserting the mysterious USB plugged into their personal device. These removable devices can also get mixed into your network. To evade this problem, avoid opening phishing emails. Therefore, it is necessary to install, maintain, and update your anti-virus software as well as firewalls periodically. Enable automatic updates on your desktops which involve accessing only the secured websites. Moreover, take into account the VPN.
Brief Insight into Tailgating
Tailgating is basically entering into any particular area without having proper authentication. Sometimes, tailgaters keep the door open for the purpose of employees getting inside it. Tailgaters can’t enter into different buildings because of the tight security for every employee. They need to show the access cards to make an entry. Therefore, the medium-scale business becomes the target for these kinds of famous social engineering attacks. In order to evade this fraudulent activity, it is of utmost importance to employ tight security in entry gates of different offices.
Use Threaded Email Communication
Conversations which are open and easy for viewing makes the task easier to find shipping scams or emails in a corporate firm. Therefore, it is imperative for each and every employee to communicate using threaded conversations. It helps them to identify the phishing messages acting as authorized emails. Employees have the liability to report to anything that appears doubtful.
Use of Clear Policies
Social engineers are talented in maneuvering people with the intent of gaining trust, access as well as use the information. Suppose the spammers can blackmail the CEO of any reputed organization by demanding a lump sum amount of money. To evade this kind of apple attack, adopt clear and well-defined rules which can put a stop to these attacks. There should not be any kind of space for flutter money transfer or sending an email containing personal information avoiding the standard norms. Therefore, the task of the social engineering scams to con someone becomes very difficult.
Be Cautious in Social Media Platforms
According to recent studies, learn social engineering attackers can utilize the public by grabbing confidential information. Therefore, it is important to share information among the public carefully. Always assume everything that you share on social media is easily accessible. Henceforth, it can invite social engineering attacks.
Essential Things For You To Remember
- Attackers always try to imbibe a sense of urgency to make you react first and think later to phishing attacks. When you encounter a high-pressure message, ensure that the source is reliable.
- Always be aware of fraudulent messages. Therefore, it is imperative to check the domain links to confirm that they are real. Also, it gives you an idea about the person sending that email.
- Hackers are always in the search of stealing information and they are trying accessing people’s accounts. When they get the access, they will try to maneuver your contact details.
- Avoid downloading files from unidentified sources to avoid any further loss of data.
- If you receive any message from an unknown source demanding huge money, then obviously it is a scam.
Learn social engineering attackers are nothing but untrustworthy professionals trying to snatch your personal data. Therefore, don’t let fear overpower you. To prevent the threat of these attackers, follow the above guidelines. We are sure this informative blog will guide you to combat this issue effectively and ensure future security.
Also read: .htaccess file in WordPress: A Comprehensive Guide
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