Social engineering attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and diverse in today's digital-first world. Attackers have a toolbox full of tactics to manipulate individuals and organizations into revealing sensitive information or granting unauthorized access. By understanding the different types of social engineering attacks, you can better protect yourself against these manipulative techniques.

Some examples of social engineering attacks include phishing, pretexting, scareware, baiting, vishing, smishing and CEO fraud. If you are unsure what qualifies as social engineering, imagine how many ways someone can manipulate you to reveal private information. Threat actors use these psychological techniques, both in person and online, to gain access to your personal or organizational information. These bad actors can install malware on your device, steal your information and even take your identity.

A new report from Barracuda has found that email conversation hijacking attacks have risen by 70% since 2022. Additionally, business email compromise (BEC) attacks accounted for 10.6% of social engineering attacks in 2023, compared to 8% in 2022 and 9% in 2021. These attacks require more effort on the part of attackers, but they typically have a much higher payout than other forms of social engineering.

I have created a comprehensive webinar, based on my recent book, “Fighting Phishing: Everything You Can Do to Fight Social Engineering and Phishing”. It contains everything that KnowBe4 and I know to defeat scammers. The evidence is clear – there is nothing most people and organizations can do to vastly lower cybersecurity risk than to mitigate social engineering attacks. Social engineering is involved in 70% to 90% of all successful attacks.

Social engineering scams can come through any communications channel (e.g., email, web, social media, SMS, phone call, etc.). They can even come in the mail as the Nextdoor warning below shares. Source: Nextdoor They can even come in person and on the television.

Ongoing social engineering campaign targets enterprises, hackers expand DNS tunneling, and a malvertising campaign leads to ransomware.

Analysis of over 3.5 billion attacks provides insight into where threat actors are placing their efforts and where you should focus your cyber defenses. It’s said you can predict the outcome of the presidential election with a small number of votes. That’s the power of statistics and a valid sample size. So, when you have 3.5 billion cyber attacks as your sample data, it’s a very accurate reflection of the state of attacks.

How protecting your organization from costly social engineering cyberattacks starts with effective prevention.