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IT Managers: Are You Keeping Up with Social-Engineering Attacks?
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Dave Moore
Dave Moore,
 User Rank: Apprentice
8/6/2018 | 7:49:04 PM
Why do social engineering attacks continue to succeed?
There is an area of corporate responsibility that is largely neglected, but represents one of the most pressing issues in the world today: the need to teach the underserved public-at-large how to be safe on the Internet.

We have $600 billion in cybercrime because effective education of the general public in Internet safety is virtually nonexistent. Society has not been taught how to avoid online scams. Internet criminals victimize millions of people every day, knowing they do not know how to defend themselves. To quote H.G. Wells, "Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe."

The Internet Safety Group is doing something about it TODAY. Nobody else is doing what we are doing: providing understandable, actionable, motivational LIVE Internet safety community training for everyone.

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And look. Consider. Contribute. Get involved. Share the word.

Thank you!

Dave Moore
REISEN1955
REISEN1955,
 User Rank: Ninja
8/7/2018 | 7:14:04 AM
Re: Why do social engineering attacks continue to succeed?
Now we have a new threat....among about 520 other threats.  I am beginning to believe it is impossible for IT managers and staff to keep up with the invasive techniques of hackers and threat actor groups.  All they have to do is sit around and THINK about ways to penetrate a network - and then do it.  Time is on their side and we are generally reactive to their threats.  It is a CATCH-UP game forever.  Which is depressing if you think about it.  AI will help over time and we have good tools now that catch some, not all, threats.  That is probably the BEST we can do.  We cannot catch everything, we will just have to try to catch whatever we can and keep at it.  
BrianN060
BrianN060,
 User Rank: Ninja
8/7/2018 | 1:27:58 PM
Re: Why do social engineering attacks continue to succeed?
"There is an area of corporate responsibility that is largely neglected..." True, but don't leave out personal responsibility.  It's not all up to corporations or the government (and in a democracy, aren't we the government as well as the governed?).  There's also the aspect of corporate policies in hiring practices.  If they don't hire people of integrity, willing to take responsibility, they'll get what they deserve. 

The prevalent concern of finding qualified people to fill positions plays a role - stop prioritizing degrees, certifications and experience in someone else's organization; do your own aptitude testing and hire people you can train to do what your organization needs doing.  If you start with good people who want and know how to learn, you've got a real human resource, not just an HR commodity.  The solution to social engineering challenges isn't artificial intelligence, it resides in the ability of individuals to distinguish fact from fallacy, reason from rhetoric. 

Want a good way to test your people's ability to recognize a social engineering attack?  Have them watch the political ads in this election cycle.  If they can't spot all the techniques used to manipulate perceptions there, they wouldn't know an SE attack if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsicord singing "Social engineering attacks are here again!" (to paraphrase Edmond Blackadder). 


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