Homework Assignments – Articles: For Week 8

This weeks posted article “Social Engineering: A means to violate a computer system” talks about how people can be a weakness in to a system for hackers. Such individuals without knowledge and training can be a target because they can be coaxed into revealing confidential information to someone if they think that someone is possibly an employee and/or upper level manager.  Such information may include but not limited to logins, passwords and datacenter administrator personal information. Hackers can also use emails as a form of Social Engineering to spread viruses, malware and worms in the form of scams, chain mail and other hoaxes.  Employees not educated in the effects of opening non-authorized email or even visiting unauthorized websites can be crucial to any system, due to the damage these emails and sites can have especially if they contain attachments which can allow the hacker(s) into the network and possibly get something to spread to other systems.  Employees need to know exactly what Social Engineering is and how people from the outside (sometimes making their way to the inside) can use the weakness of people to infiltrate a system simply because an employee is unaware that such activity is being used in today’s day and age and the means of how it’s done.

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http://www.techrepublic.com/article/social-engineering-audits-on-the-rise-what-this-means-for-cios-and-csos/

This article titled “Social engineering audits on the rise: means CIO and CSO’s” discusses importance of having regular “social engineering audits” in place in the same way physical IT systems need regular audits (depending on the type of business – of course). A company needs to know how strong their employees are and if they are following the designated policies and procedures in place which should explain the what they should and should not do as well as how to “be on the look” for suspicious activity like social engineering.  Regular automated tests can be put into place to test the behavior of these employees and if they are following the proper protocol.