From the course: Performing a Technical Security Audit and Assessment

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Conduct social engineering

Conduct social engineering

From the course: Performing a Technical Security Audit and Assessment

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Conduct social engineering

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- Social engineering is a technique security assessors can employ to trick end users into divulging information they shouldn't. This information often includes user names and passwords as well as other sensitive data such as credit card or social security numbers. Social engineering can be conducted in a variety of ways including in person or over the phone through simple lying. Via malicious websites using a technique called phishing. Via email using phishing or another technique called spear phishing, and via text or instant messages. The purpose of conducting social engineering during a security assessment is to test how effective an organization's security awareness training is. If an assessor is successful in getting a user to share information they shouldn't, this should be a finding in the assessor's final report. The recommended remediation could be to improve user security training or make it more frequent. On the other hand, if an assessor attempts social engineering tactics…

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