Social Engineering Risk Assessment

Employees continue to pose the biggest threat to business data safety. Social engineering is the act of attempting to gain access to valuable data by impersonating a trusted business or individual. This type of cyberattack can come in the form of emails, advertisements, texts, calls, or in person. Cybercriminals establish credibility and then trick targets into giving up data access, PINs or passwords. These campaigns are still very widespread despite data protection security controls. Social engineering attacks may be gateways for cybercriminals to hijack your access to a larger organization’s data. DIGIGUARD social engineering risk assessments can provide an accurate snapshot of employee cybersecurity behavior, and how effective your data protection controls are. Our team will:

• Research company payloads and create customized, controlled engagement scenarios
• Engage employees with carefully planned phishing emails using both automated and customized methods
• Report click rates, credential sharing, downloading and risk potential
• Provide training for remediation and risk reduction
• Perform reassessments
• Perform additional comprehensive assessments for vishing threats, social media attacks, USB drop attacks or site visits to simulate unauthorized physical site access to data

Social Engineering Testing and Assessing

Gaining insight into employee behavior before an attack occurs is crucial. Protecting your business from the potentially devastating loss of data and damage to your company’s reputation is the goal of social engineering assessment testing. The technology that helps your business thrive can present the greatest threat if it is not carefully managed with cybersecurity testing and awareness training. DIGIGUARD will help prevent your business from becoming low-hanging fruit for cybercriminals. We can send customized simulation tests company-wide, or to select departments and employees. Assessment results can be shared with employees or kept confidential. Our team can suggest ways to reward employee compliance. Here are some of the tests we conduct:

• Phishing/Spear phishing assessments – A combination of broad, automated emails and sophisticated, targeted individual emails using available public data
• Business email compromise (BEC) attack assessment – Simulate email compromise for a senior employee and issue suspicious instructions to download data or share credentials
• Vishing (voice call) assessments – Simulate phone attacks using industry documented scenarios to coax employees into giving unauthorized access or downloading files
• Site assessments – Attempt to gain physical access to buildings, workstations, and documents. We will use a variety of methods such as dropping USB devices, creating fake credentials, holding doors open, walking through unsecured doors, etc.

Social Engineering Baseline Reporting

Benchmarking employee behavior during a social engineering assessment will establish a baseline for measuring remediation efforts. A cybersecurity gap analysis will highlight missing controls and areas of vulnerability in your organization’s training policies and procedures. You will have detailed information to alert employees of their actions and the potential impact of negligence. DIGIGUARD assessment reports will include:

• Executive summary of strengths and weaknesses
• Click rates and multiple click rates
• Credential sharing
• Downloaded information
• Risk and likelihood potential
• Impact potential
• List of at-risk users
• List of at-risk departments
• Prioritized remediation steps and training guidance

Cybersecurity Employee Training

Most data breaches begin with a single phishing email. Businesses must do everything they can to filter out malicious emails and prevent data loss or compromised financial and banking access credentials. Training employees and creating a strong policy and culture of cybersecurity is equally important for your SMB. DIGIGUARD consultants can provide employee training and workshops that help users understand their role in cybersecurity such as:

• Employee actions that put the company at risk
• Cyberthreat examples
• How to respond to cyberthreats

Testing and training employees through simulated social engineering attacks strengthen threat awareness, decrease the risk of cyberattacks, and improve the IT security culture of your organization. Contact DIGIGUARD today to learn more about social engineering risk assessments and training.