Social Engineering and Cybersecurity

SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND CYBERSECURITY 0
Social engineering and cyber security

SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND CYBERSECURITY 1
ABSTRACT
Social engineering is a term which is utilized for a broad
range of malicious activities accomplished through individual
communication. Mainly, social engineering uses
psychological manipulation to trick consumers into making
privacy issues. Cyber security is an approach that provides a
way to users for protecting peripheral devices from the
attackers. This research study focuses on social engineering
and cyber security and discusses the security risks linked with
cyber security. The relevant facts and information obtained
from the previous studies and papers and identified the risk
factors linked with cyber security. This report shows the
significance of cyber security in the organization and
reviewed the cyber-attacks and threats occurred due to social
engineering and cyber security. Therefore, it is commended
that users should ensure that they use only authentic networks
while accessing their private accounts and enable antivirus,
firewall and encryption techniques in their computer devices.
All these techniques can help companies and users for
protecting sensitive data from hackers and criminals.
Keywords: social engineering, cyber security, encryption,
cyber-attacks, firewall and computer devices.
Social engineering and cyber security

SOCIAL ENGINEERING AND CYBERSECURITY 2
Introduction
The term social engineering is a part of engineering which is
used for a broad range of malicious activities accomplished
through individual communication. Mainly, social engineering
uses psychological manipulation to trick consumers into
making security mistakes [1]. Cyber security is a process
which is used in the field of information technologies for
protecting networks and servers for attack or unauthentic
servers. The purpose of this report is to examine the concept
of social engineering and cyber security and evaluate the
cyber-security risks occurred in computer devices. In this
modern era, security issues and social engineering attacks are
very common problems which occur in the computer networks
and devices. This study is divided into several steps which
include social engineering and cyber security, the importance
of cyber security, cyber security issues, and methods to
address security issues.
Social engineering and cyber security
Social engineering is defined as the psychological
manipulation of consumers into performing actions and
controlling confidential data. The key idea behind social
engineering is to take benefits of a potential consumer’s
tendencies and emotional reactions. In order to access the
computer devices of users, the attackers use advanced
computer software and tools. Below figure shows the Impact
of social engineering attack in various countries and locations.
Figure: social engineering data
(Source: Saini, Rao and, Panda)
A social engineer helps consumers to trick an employee into
divulging their login ID and password more credential [2]. A
recent study identified that social engineering attacks happen
in mainly one or more stages. In which hackers first identify
and collect the necessary information of users and their
devices after that they develop an advanced algorithm for
reducing the performance of user’s devices. Moreover, the
attackers transfer unwanted links and signals to the computer
servers in order to collect the personal information of users
[3]. Such kind of steps help criminals for obtaining the
account details of users and they may be lost their private
details like user name, pictures, bank details and so on. It is
observed that the social engineering life cycle contain major
four steps which are described below:
 Preparing the ground for the attack
 Deceiving the consumers to gain a foothold
 Collecting the data and information of consumers
 Closing the communication and removing all traces
of malware
Cyber security refers to a set of techniques and methods used
for protecting data and information of users along with
computer networks from attackers. In this modern era, the use
of computer devices and the internet is growing rapidly due to
which most of the hackers attack physical devices used by
consumers. It is estimated that the market of cyber security is
expected to reach 170 billion by 2020 and cyber security
provide a platform to the companies and users for
understanding the risks factors liked with the computer
devices [4].
Figure: cyber security
(Source: Saini, Rao and, Panda)