Social Engineering in Network Assessment
Business continuity planning includes network security, specifically risk assessments and management. Simply having antivirus programs on all company computers is not sufficient, and in order to identify weak points on your system, a network security professional should be brought in for performing an assessment. He or she will not only examine the technical components of your network but also the physical and social.
Examining the inside and perimeter of a network, a security professional uses ethical hacking techniques to find entrance points. Through penetration tests and vulnerability scans, he or she simulates approaches hackers use to enter a system in order to assess your company’s or organization’s network. Additionally, past security breaches, operating systems, and interviews are performed during the network assessment.
Interviewing employees is a common strategy for testing social engineering, essentially off-the-internet phishing used for obtaining password or username information.
In a social engineering test, a network engineer attempts to trick users into revealing password information and, using this, tried to access the system.
To get this information, he or she initiates conversations with employees through telephone, instant message, or email – only the employees are unaware a network assessment is being performed. Trying to obtain credit card or account numbers, social security numbers, or passwords, the engineer also creates authentic-seeming emails that take users to similarly-convincing websites, which request password information.
Because hackers and other online criminals can target specific individuals within a company, such as executives, a network engineer takes a similar approach.
Hackers use several tactics to break into a network, and the social and physical components are often looked over. Because employees may not be aware of the latest phishing scheme or virus, they can easily be lured into providing confidential information. Social engineering testing in a network assessment, then, attempts to expose human lapses in judgment and examines overall security safety awareness.
With the physical component, in which a network security engineer finds physical ways a hacker, criminal, or intruder could obtain data, and the technical and social examinations, a report lists all weaknesses along a company’s system and the approaches for fixing them. Because effective security can be the dividing line between happy or dissatisfied customers and financial gain or losses, regular network assessments need to be performed for data safety, staying up to date, and complying with industry standards.