Hackers leaning on social engineering, finds McAfee

A new whitepaper from McAfee entitled ‘Hacking the Human Operating System’ highlights how social engineering can attack both business and personal users.

The report shows how many  popular scams that affect millions of businesses and homes every day intend to trick the end user in performing an action, which would compromise their personal details.

Among the findings in the report was the suggestion that over 60 per cent of email throughout the world is regarded as spam, and that a sharp rise in phishing scam emails has been observed. McAfee now tracks over 30m suspicious emails. Aside from that, 80 per cent of workers have not been able to recognise phishing scams among the more common and most-often used.

The report claims that social engineering is used by everyone from private investigators to hackers and terrorists.

The consultancy director of risk assessment firm Storm Guidance, Sarb Sembhi, told SCMagazineUK.com:

“In the work environment when users are conditioned to do more in less time, and they are not always trained to pick up on social engineering, and it is no surprise that users don’t always identify these threats easily when they arrive at the corporate desktop.”

Hackers will always lean on the latest technology to take advantage of other people’s vulnerability. The key is to be vigilant, especially businesses that hold customer data as they are responsible for keeping that data secure. Whether offering permanent positions or temporary IT security contract jobs, they need to ensure that trained cyber personnel are on staff all the time to help prevent a beach.