What Is The Primary Countermeasure To Social Engineering?

What is the primary countermeasure to social engineering?

1. Awareness.
2. Whaling.
3. Phishing.
4. Shoulder surfing.

Answer:  The countermeasure to social engineering is awareness. Social Engineering enforces the victims to provide sensitive information.

Social engineering is a range of malicious acts which is obtained by human interaction. Manipulation is common and forces the users to give their personal information which is used against them. The attack took place in more than one step such as the attacker first checking the thorough information about the user, their vulnerability, and weakness in security, and then the victim’s trust gaining begins that in return reveals the sensitive data and remote access. The techniques of the social engineering are listed below:

Baiting:

In this method, the attackers provide bait like a false promise to the victims. The bait lures them into the traps where they provide their personal information and infect the system. The physical media is common for baiting.

Scareware: 

This is a common technique when using the Internet. On some websites, you may see the notification that your system received an error and asked you to click on the link for protected software installations, but in return, your computer was infected with the virus.

Pretexting:

In it, the hackers obtain data through different lies that look appealing. They act like they are from someplace where their data is needed to perform a task.

Phishing:

This is a popular method of social engineering; it includes email and SMS scams that create urgency or fear in victims. They trap the victim in a way to download the attachments, and links and show their information.

Spear phishing:

It’s a technique in which hackers disguised themselves as the IT consultant of the company and send the email that trick the victims to give them credit card information etc.

The countermeasure to the social engineering is listed in the following:

• Awareness against social engineering.
• Business process.
• Technical protection.
• Test the employee toughness in social engineering.