1. Security Awareness Training
In most cases, a healthy cybersecurity attitude is based on human behavior. Social engineering is the manipulation of behavior. Ensuring that all employees understand the various tricks used by cybercriminals is the best defense against social engineering.
For example, phishing email campaigns aim to encourage recipients to click a link or download an infected file. Fraudsters use attributes such as trust and urgency to make email look like a popular brand and disguise the malicious nature of email.
Other social engineering techniques (including surveillance) are used to carry out cyber attacks such as Business Email Compromise (BEC). Educating employees about the obvious signs of an attack can prevent cyber threats from becoming cybersecurity incidents.
2. Fishing simulation
Phishing emails are still the most common method of malware infection.
A common technique for training users to recognize phishing emails is to use phishing mockups. Simulation software is usually cloud-based and is provided by a professional provider. Therefore, simulation sessions can be used remotely and are often tailored to the specific needs of your organization. The feedback and metrics help show how successful a phishing campaign is and areas to focus on to improve detection and avoidance by employees.
3. Prevent pre-text
Pretext is a type of social engineering that often requires the preparation of targets and then the development of an urgent environment for acquiring sensitive data and facilitating the transfer of funds. To avoid pretext and social engineering attacks, you can take advantage of security awareness training complemented by clear security policies that specifically address pretext and grooming challenges.
4. Use gateways to prevent fraudulent email
Social engineers like to use email as a tool to commit scams. Email gateways are used to exclude spam emails.
Approximately 14.5 billion spam emails are sent daily. Inside, there is a mixture of annoying and dangerous emails. The latter is socially manipulated to steal data and infect networks with malware. Email gateways can be on-premises or cloud-based. Email gateways, when properly configured, have been shown to reduce spam by up to 99.9%.
5. Use the right process (BEC / CEO fraud prevention)
Social engineering is designed to fool people. However, technical processes can only help to a limited extent to prevent this type of attack. Technologies such as antivirus and firewalls are important, but they cannot prevent attacks by social engineering. For the CEO Fraud and Business Email Compromise (BEC), it makes sense to have a specific procedural process. For example, if you want to send money, run a check and balance process. Request personal or similar confirmation of remittances in excess of a certain amount.
6. Properly set social media privacy and posting policies
Social engineering techniques include target grooming, where information about the victim needs to be gathered. Also, spear phishing emails are most effective when created using the personal information of the identified brand. Social media sites are often used to collect this personal information.
Make sure your company’s security policy takes a clear approach to employees posting on social media to prevent social engineering attacks. Oversharing is a real problem and enables social engineering. However, this can be a difficult policy to apply when using social media in a private context.
7. Secure mobile device
People tend to open texts, as evidenced by the 98% open rate for all texts. SMShing is the mobile text version of the phishing email. It makes sense for cybercriminals to use mobile texts to deliver malware such as mobile banking trojans, which have increased by 58% in Q1 of 2019.
To avoid mobile phones becoming a mobile threat, ensure that your employees understand this vector. You should also put structures, such as policies, in place to prevent unauthorized mobile apps from being installed on work mobiles.
8. Configure privileged access and 2FA
Social engineering often relies on elevated privileges to grant access to network resources. Adding a layer of authentication helps mitigate the impact of social engineering attacks.
Two-factor authentication or 2FA usually requires the use of another factor with a username and password before granting access. This can be as simple as a mobile text code or a biometric code.
This extra credential makes phishing more difficult as the fraudster may be able to steal the password easily but getting at the second factor is harder. Also, ensure that roles are set so only certain users have access to privileged resources.
9. Implement 24/7 monitoring practices
Security team alerts can be enhanced and enhanced with services that provide 24/7 monitoring.
Cost-effective and effective, whether your organization needs to comply with regulations, protect your environment from cyber threats and data breaches, or ensure maximum uptime. So you need to find a way to monitor your environment 24/7 in a profitable way. Achieve maximum ROI. The
Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) helps provide this level of centralized security services. They have professional security personnel to perform the operations necessary to keep the network secure. Monitoring the usually involves using tools that can detect problems on your network. This includes behavioral analytics and intelligent tools to help detect anomalies. Monitoring also improves overall security by ensuring that the software is up to date and correcting server misconfigurations and more.