On the 11th Day of Christmas: 2018 Prediction

Social engineering attacks are on the rise

How have we reached the 11th day of Christmas? We are sure you are all ready to start wrapping up your work ready for the Christmas fun. Before that happens we have two more days of cybersecurity news to share with you; starting with today’s prediction for 2018. We predict that throughout 2018, social engineering will remain widespread.

Social engineering has long been a successful way for cybercriminals to gain access to the business. It requires little technical effort, so it is hardly a surprise that we don’t think it is going anywhere fast. These attacks exploit your weakest link; your people. For the attacker they are highly lucrative, as they are easy and cheap to implement.

Due to the variety of social engineering attacks, your people can be attacked from many different angles. It could be a deceptive email address, a convincing duplicate website or compromising USBs with malware. There are so many ways of exploiting employees to receive the information that they require, so it is hardly a surprise that criminals are looking to use this form of attack more and more. Essentially, they rely on your employees trusting them, which is something most people inherently do.

Training and awareness is the easiest way to protect your business against the threat of these big-reward, low-cost attacks. You don’t want a cybercriminal gaining access to your business’ key information. You definitely don’t want them to exploit an employee to do so. With these type of attacks set to rise, we suggest that you spend a little money on your training to provide yourself with the first aid to prevent them. Allow your employees to be less trusting of online sources. Protect your business.