Social engineering is the art of accessing information, physical places, systems, data, property or money by using psychological methods, rather than technical methods or brute force. In order to do so, social engineering relies upon a set of tactics that exploit psychological weaknesses and blind spots in order to convince victims to give social engineers what they want.
That’s what can be so dangerous about social engineering—criminals can use psychological blind spots to have employees willingly give unauthorized parties access, information or property. These attacks can occur in a number of different forms, including a well-crafted spear-phishing campaign, a plausible-sounding phone call from a criminal posing as a vendor, or even an on-site visit from a “fire inspector” who demands access to the company’s server room.
