5 Steps to Prepare for a Social Engineering Assessment

Organizations in today's digital age have to deal with many security threats, and social engineering attacks remain the most expected of all. An employee can receive an innocent-looking email from the IT department asking for their password to "fix an issue". They would give it without thinking. Very much needed then would be an assessment to address these risks, a social engineering assessment. The five steps given here are the right way to go about preparing oneself for the assessment-taking.

Assemble Your Team: It Include internal personnel who understand your organization's culture and processes. Consider bringing in external experts, such as ethical hackers, who can provide an unbiased perspective on vulnerabilities.

Define the Scope: Next, clearly define the scope of your social engineering assessment. Determine which areas to focus on, such as phishing attempts or physical access vulnerabilities. Decide whether the assessment will target internal employees or external threats.

Conduct Reconnaissance: Utilize open-source intelligence (OSINT) to understand the company structure, employee roles, and potential weaknesses. This reconnaissance phase is crucial as it helps your team develop a targeted attack plan that aligns with the unique characteristics of your organization.

Develop Realistic Scenarios: These scenarios imitate the likely weapons used by the attacker's cunning, such as the mask of being a bossy, pushy, or rash person. Just consider someone purportedly calling you from the technical support group, asking for your sensitive details.
Prepare Communication and Documentation: You may inform the relevant stakeholders about what is happening in the field assessment not too much such that their effectiveness would be compromised.

To conduct a social engineering assessment, just like the one Annexus Technologies prepared by assembling a knowledgeable team, setting clear objectives, conducting reconnaissance effectively, developing realistic scenarios, and preparing proper documentation can be very helpful in correctly identifying vulnerabilities in an organization.