Social Engineering Testing
Real Attacks Simulation, Remediation Advice and Practical Aid
With 19 years in cybersecurity and Certified Ethical Hackers on board, ScienceSoft helps companies evaluate and increase their employees’ resilience to social engineering attacks.
Social engineering penetration testing imitates the approach and techniques intruders use to trick employees into divulging sensitive information or enabling security system breaches. It helps evaluate your employees’ security awareness and adherence to security practices, including under the pressure of intimidation or urgency. Social engineering testing can come as a part of comprehensive penetration testing or as a separate service.
Phishing
Malicious emails sent to multiple employees.
Spear phishing
Emails sent to a specific employee(s) responsible for high-level decisions.
Whaling
Email attacks targeting the C-suite.
Vishing
Manipulative phone calls.
Smishing
Manipulative mobile text messages.
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ScienceSoft’s Penetration Testing Consultant, CEH Uladzislau Murashka shares his experience: "To test user behavior in case of phishing attacks (the most frequent type), we use:
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Social Engineering Tactics We Apply
Imitating cybercriminals, ScienceSoft uses persuasion techniques to make social engineering engagements plausible.
Authority
Posing as an authoritative person (e.g., a police official or the company's CEO) to pressure your employees into fulfilling the required action.
Intimidation
Threatening with severe consequences if certain actions are not performed.
Social proof
Implying that a required action is what many people do.
Scarcity
Making a time- or quantity-limited offer to cause subconscious desire to accept it.
Urgency
Calling to immediate action to make your employees act without thinking.
Familiarity
Impersonating people your employees like or have met before.
How We Test
Below we describe typical steps ScienceSoft takes during social engineering testing projects:
1
Planning
Depending on the customer’s testing needs, we define:
- The type(s) of social engineering attacks.
- Target employees to test.
- The timing of the attack.
2
Reconnaissance
In case of black box social engineering pentesting, we collect information about the company, its employees and business partners the same way the real attackers would do: from open sources (business registers, listings, social media, press releases, newsletters, etc.).
In case ScienceSoft and the client agree on the white box approach, we request the necessary information from the company’s representatives.
3
Attack preparation
We create a story behind the attack and prepare the texts for malicious emails, manipulative SMS or phone calls.
4
Attack simulation
ScienceSoft’s ethical hackers run one or several social engineering attacks on the target employees.
5
Reporting
We analyze the testing findings and provide a final report containing:
- An overview of employees’ security knowledge gaps, risky behavior.
- Information disclosed by the employees.
- Identified vulnerabilities, e.g., email filtering inefficiency.
- Potential threats of exploiting the security gaps by cybercriminals.
- Remediation recommendations.
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Additionally, we can perform the remediation activities to help reduce the risk in case of real social engineering attacks:
- Preparing and/or conducting cybersecurity training for employees with a focus on vulnerabilities revealed during the testing.
- Installing and configuring security components: firewalls, email security and antivirus software, a data loss prevention system, etc.
Our Customers Say
- 19 years in cybersecurity.
- IBM Business Partner since 2003.
- 200+ IT security assessment and consulting projects for healthcare, finance, manufacturing, telecom and other industries.
- Certified Ethical Hackers on board.
- Efficient quality management and customers’ data security confirmed by ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certificates.
- ScienceSoft USA Corporation is listed among The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies 2022 by Financial Time.
Preventing Social Engineering: Challenges We Handle
Challenge #1
It is difficult to create lifelike test conditions to see how employees would respond to malicious psychological manipulation.
Challenge #2
It is difficult to build strong email security to recognize and resist phishing emails.
Social Engineering Testing: Success Stories by ScienceSoft
Pentesting and Social Engineering Testing for Reconice to Improve ePHI Security
As part of IT infrastructure pentesting for a speech recognition software provider, ScienceSoft imitated a phishing attack against the Customer’s staff to check their ability to recognize and withstand social engineering techniques.
Vulnerability Assessment, Pentesting, and Social Engineering Testing for a Retail Bank
As a result of mock phishing attacks, ScienceSoft’s ethical hackers convinced 65% of targeted employees to send personal data via email. ScienceSoft recommended that the Customer hold security training sessions for employees.
Code Review, Pentesting and Social Engineering Testing for an Award-Winning IT Company
To find maximum security gaps endangering the Customer's cloud application, ScienceSoft combined source code review and penetration testing with social engineering testing.
Network Pentesting and Social Engineering Testing for a Mobile Operator
During a pentesting project, ScienceSoft simulated phishing attacks to check if potential intruders can use social engineering to break into the Customer's network.
Social engineering testing
We plan, prepare and stage social engineering attacks in 3 days, as well as advise on raising employees' security awareness.
Social engineering testing and remediation
We help remediate social engineering risks identified as a result of mock social engineering attacks.
Why Social Engineering Is a Cybersecurity Concern Number One
Social engineering has proven to be the most efficient way to get around a company’s cyberdefense:
$4.65 million is the average cost of a breach caused due to phishing.
In 86% of organizations, at least one person clicked a phishing link.