Social Engineering Threats in Cybersecurity: A Detailed Report

This report provides an in-depth analysis of social engineering attacks within the realm of cybersecurity. It begins with an introduction to the concept, highlighting the modification and manipulation of human actions to retrieve confidential data. The report delves into two primary types of social engineering attacks: phishing and pre-texting, detailing their causes and the potential damages they can inflict, such as financial loss, data breaches, and reputational harm. The causes are identified as fraudulent communications and manipulation via text messages. The paper then outlines a comprehensive recommendation plan, which includes awareness programs, the importance of verifying information, and the implementation of tools like AppRiver to filter phishing emails. Furthermore, it emphasizes the need for educational and training programs, secure policies, and regular software updates. The report concludes by summarizing the impact of social engineering attacks and the importance of proactive measures to mitigate risks, referencing various sources to support its findings.

Professional issues in computing
Assignment

Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Types of attack, causes, and potential damages.........................................................................2
Recommendation plan................................................................................................................3
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................3
References:.................................................................................................................................3

Title: Social Engineering threat to cyber security
Introduction:
The research has been conducted on the social engineering attacks to cyber security. The
discussion and meetings are arranged with the top professionals to share their working
experience and facing problem due to the occurrence of social engineering issues. We come
across in the research that the social engineering attacks are not strategically placed by the
attackers. They are the modification and manipulation of the actions which are capable of
retrieving confidential data from different sources. These attacks involve the human
intervention for data leakages. In this paper we are going to discuss on the types of social
engineering attacks, what are the causes and potential damage caused by them, and what
action plan should be taken to remain proactive for the occurrence of attacks.
Types of attack, causes, and potential damages
Types of attack Potential causes Potential damages
Phishing The initialization of fraud
communication between the
attacker and the victim is the
basic cause of this attack
(Kumar, 2015). The user is
unable to make difference
between the fake and the
actual webpages and put all
the confidential information
as asked in the requirement
file.
Creation of fake email is the
basic method opted for
carrying over phishing attack
The goodwill of the person
get exploited
Loss of bank account details
Retrieval of credit card
details
Leakages of the official
confidential data
Loss of money
Tragedy
Pre-texting Fabricating the user to
provide their confidential
data with the trail of text
Loss of private information
such as bank account detail,
credit cards, and others

messages (Hobel, 2014). The
user did not get the time to
think for a while and start
putting their all the
confidential data in the
messages.
Victim Mentally get hurt
Recommendation plan
The arrangement of awareness program helps the victim to be aware of the social engineering
attacks. The user should not provide their confidential information unless the confirmation
from the higher authority (Lord, 2018). The inclusion of AppRiver application helps in
filtering out the phishing emails from reaching to the internal server of the user (Beckers,
2012). The information should be provided to the higher authority to block the accounts from
transaction if in case phishing attack occurs on the victim system. The blocking of the
accounts helps in preventing the loss which can be caused from the occurrence of phishing
attack. The user should focus on the educational and the training program of social
engineering, information going to provide to the third party, determining the loss of assests
which can take place in sharing the confidential data, creation of secured policies, updating
the required software on the system, queries should be resolved, and others (Hasan, 2010). It
is recommended to remain proactive and collect all the information about the third party
before sharing a single piece of confidential information with them.
Conclusion:
This paper help use to educate about the flow of social engineering attacks and how they can
affect the user. The problem of attacks can be resolved by keeping user update about these
attacks by going through the educational and the training program arranged for the social
engineering attacks.
References:
Beckers, K. (2012). Analysis of Social engineering threats with attack graphs . 1st ed.
[ebook].

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8f80/541e5a1be5f2b70214176e4edb473bd63a2e.pdf
[Accessed 24 Mar. 2018].
Hasan, M. (2010). Case study on social engineering techniques for persuasion. 1st ed.
[ebook].
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c798/fe6462214a60a264bc0a164199a56f21f12d.pdf
[Accessed 24 Mar. 2018].
Hobel, H. (2014). Advanced social engineering attacks. 1st ed. [ebook]. https://www.sba-
research.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/jisa_revised.pdf [Accessed 26 Sep. 2017].
Kumar, A. (2015). Social engineering threats and awareness: A survey. 1st ed. [ebook].
http://www.ejaet.com/PDF/2-11/EJAET-2-11-15-19.pdf [Accessed 26 Sep. 2017].
Lord, N. (2018). Social engineering attacks: Common techniques and how to prevent an
attack, Digital guardian [Online]pp.2-4. Available at https://digitalguardian.com/blog/social-
engineering-attacks-common-techniques-how-prevent-attack [Accessed 23 Mar, 2018]