Risk & Business Magazine Benson Kearley IFG Fall 2016 | Page 30

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

The Dark Side Of Trust:
Social Engineering
“THE FINAL LINE
OF DEFENSE
AGAINST SOCIAL
ENGINEERING
ATTACKS
SHOULD BE
INSURANCE.”
30

|

FALL 2016

W

hen people picture
“hacking”, they often
think of computer
programmers hunched
over their keyboards
in dark rooms stealing money out of the
accounts of large corporations. What
many people do not picture, however, is
the reality of how most incidents dubbed
“hacking” actually occur. People don’t
picture a smooth talking man calling up
the corporate office on the phone and

getting an employee to tell them what
the password is to the corporate email
server. They don’t imagine a well-dressed
man in a suit fooling a security guard
into giving them access to secure areas of
buildings. That, however, is exactly what
social engineers do.
First and foremost, it is essential to
have an understanding that social
engineering and cyber attacks, though
sometimes related, are not the same