For sure social engineering. That eventually becomes the most serious threat. The jackpot is getting to a user. They are the ones with access to money, confidential data, etc. and it often won’t set off alarms because it doesn’t look out of the ordinary. Get them to do something on your behalf or grab their credentials and you basically get to bypass security.
Yeah no way to make an alarm for say looking at their own confidential files. The key to social engineering working is having someone stupid with credentials, and you can not fix stupid. Oddly enough a lot of the issues I saw where on the call centre side (I guess paying people nothing to do that job may have been a mistake). Then again you you get access to a single helpdesk person you get a silly amount of access everywhere.
You’d be surprised at how effective some hackers are. I was in an industry where we generally employed smart and educated people. I always told them the person on the other side doesn’t eat if they don’t fool someone. We would push education and protocols. For example, multiple approvals for a wire transfer over different channels and verbal verification of the account number after positive identification.
These people are submitting phony job applications with infected resumes. They email back and forth posing as a prospective client and will even talk on the phone before sending infected documents. They send fake invoices. They call the help desk. They forge checks. They try impersonation wire transfer scams. They send you fake marketing type packages or gifts with infected USB drives. They try to set up bogus interviews for articles or award nominations and pump you for information. They pose as vendors like printer repair. Or someone with some bullshit excuse asking an office manager in a remote office to unlock the server room. Some asshole showed up once and tried to get a receptionist to plug in a thumb drive. They will try to exploit every function of an organization. They are relentless and whenever you think you’ve seen it all there’s something new.
For sure social engineering. That eventually becomes the most serious threat. The jackpot is getting to a user. They are the ones with access to money, confidential data, etc. and it often won’t set off alarms because it doesn’t look out of the ordinary. Get them to do something on your behalf or grab their credentials and you basically get to bypass security.
Yeah no way to make an alarm for say looking at their own confidential files. The key to social engineering working is having someone stupid with credentials, and you can not fix stupid. Oddly enough a lot of the issues I saw where on the call centre side (I guess paying people nothing to do that job may have been a mistake). Then again you you get access to a single helpdesk person you get a silly amount of access everywhere.
You’d be surprised at how effective some hackers are. I was in an industry where we generally employed smart and educated people. I always told them the person on the other side doesn’t eat if they don’t fool someone. We would push education and protocols. For example, multiple approvals for a wire transfer over different channels and verbal verification of the account number after positive identification.
These people are submitting phony job applications with infected resumes. They email back and forth posing as a prospective client and will even talk on the phone before sending infected documents. They send fake invoices. They call the help desk. They forge checks. They try impersonation wire transfer scams. They send you fake marketing type packages or gifts with infected USB drives. They try to set up bogus interviews for articles or award nominations and pump you for information. They pose as vendors like printer repair. Or someone with some bullshit excuse asking an office manager in a remote office to unlock the server room. Some asshole showed up once and tried to get a receptionist to plug in a thumb drive. They will try to exploit every function of an organization. They are relentless and whenever you think you’ve seen it all there’s something new.