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By Mark Coriaty, Chief Strategy Officer, Eze Castle Integration

As financial firms become increasingly interconnected and globalized, their dependence on cyberspace has skyrocketed. While this amplified reliance on the infobahn has accelerated productivity and growth, it has also exposed firms to larger risks, such as hacking, malware, spyware and social engineering. The latter, which is the most disregarded element of an organization’s security program, is also the most dangerous.

Social engineering (e.g. phishing, pretexting, baiting, etc.) relies on the exploitation of human behaviors to breach an organization’s information security system. Hackers prey on propensities of human nature, including:

• Trust: Some people are trusting to a fault; therefore, they do not question the intentions/identity of another person until proven to be false.
• Ignorance: Disregard for the consequences of carelessness with sensitive business information.
• Laziness: Willingness to cut corners, such as not filing away confidential paperwork and leaving it exposed for others to see.
• Kindness: Employees want to feel that others can leverage them for their assistance and information because we’ve trained them to do so. However, this can lead to divulging too much information to the wrong person.

During a social engineering scheme, criminals will typically attempt to trick victims into clicking on ......................

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