What is Social Engineering?
Social engineering is a cyber attack technique that manipulates human psychology to trick people into divulging confidential information, downloading malware, or taking actions that compromise security. Unlike technical hacking methods that exploit software vulnerabilities, social engineering exploits human trust, curiosity, and emotions.
Social engineering attacks typically follow a deliberate process. Attackers first identify and research their targets, gathering intelligence about their roles, relationships, and routines. Armed with this information, they craft personalized approaches designed to appear legitimate and urgent. These attacks succeed by exploiting natural human tendencies—the desire to be helpful, fear of consequences, respect for authority, or trust in familiar communications.
The Evolution of Social Engineering
Social engineering attacks have existed for decades, but their sophistication and scale have grown exponentially. In the 1990s, attacks were relatively simple—threat actors would call employees pretending to be IT support, tricking them into revealing passwords or dial-in numbers for corporate servers. These early attacks relied on basic impersonation and exploited limited security awareness.
Today’s social engineering landscape is far more complex. Modern attackers leverage extensive data from breaches, social media, and public records to craft highly personalized attacks. What once targeted individual credentials now aims for high dollar wire transfers, intellectual property theft, and supply chain compromises. Organized cybercrime groups have industrialized social engineering, combining it with phishing campaigns, deepfake technology, and AI-generated content to create attacks that are increasingly difficult to detect.
How Does Social Engineering Work?
1. Research and Target Selection
Threat actors identify potential victims and gather information from social media, company websites, data breaches, and public records to understand their roles, relationships, and routines.
2. Relationship Building
The threat actor establishes contact and credibility, often by impersonating a trusted figure — such as a colleague, vendor, IT support, or executive — using details from their research to appear legitimate.
3. Exploitation
Once trust is established, the threat actor creates a sense of urgency, authority, or fear to manipulate the victim into taking action, such as clicking a malicious link, transferring funds, or sharing credentials.
4. Execution
The victim complies with the request, unknowingly compromising security by providing access, sending money, or installing malware.
5. Cover-Up
Threat actors often work to hide their tracks by deleting communications, using legitimate-looking domains, or maintaining the deception long enough to achieve their objectives before detection.
Social engineering can exist in isolation or be used as one tactic in a larger attack chain. For example, Arctic Wolf found that 72.9% of business email compromise (BEC) attacks investigated by Arctic Wolf® Incident Response in 2024 began with phishing.
What Are Common Types of Social Engineering Attacks?
1. Phishing
Threat actors impersonate trusted entities through email, text, or phone calls to trick victims into clicking malicious links, sharing credentials, or transferring funds. Variants include spear phishing (targeted), whaling (targeting executives), vishing (voice calls), and smishing (SMS messages).
2. Business Email Compromise (BEC)
Attackers compromise or impersonate a legitimate email account—often an executive or vendor—to request fraudulent wire transfers or sensitive information. BEC attacks cost organizations billions annually.
3. Baiting
Attackers lure victims with false promises of free software, downloads, or prizes to trick them into revealing information or installing malware.
4. Scareware
Pop-up alerts falsely claim a user’s system is infected, pressuring them to purchase fake antivirus software or download malware.
5. Pretexting
Attackers create fabricated scenarios or impersonate authority figures (IT support, vendors, executives) to manipulate victims into providing access or information.
6. Quid Pro Quo
Threat actors offer services or benefits in exchange for credentials, access, or sensitive data.
7. Spoofing
Attackers disguise their identity by falsifying email addresses, phone numbers, websites, or domains to appear legitimate during social engineering attempts.
8. Tailgating
Unauthorized individuals gain physical access to secure locations by following authorized employees or using deception.
Why is Social Engineering So Effective?
Social engineering remains a prolific and popular attack method because it exploits human nature rather than technical vulnerabilities.
Reasons social engineering is effective include:
- Targets human psychology: Attacks manipulate natural emotions like fear, urgency, trust, curiosity, and the desire to be helpful, making people act before thinking critically.
- Bypasses technical defenses: Even organizations with strong firewalls, antivirus software, and network security can be compromised when attackers manipulate employees into granting access directly.
- Requires minimal technical skill: Unlike sophisticated hacking techniques, social engineering relies primarily on research, impersonation, and persuasion, making it accessible to a wide range of threat actors.
- Exploits information availability: Attackers leverage publicly available data from social media, company websites, data breaches, and professional networks to craft highly personalized and convincing attacks.
- Difficult to detect: Because attacks often use legitimate communication channels and appear to come from trusted sources, they can evade traditional security tools and go unnoticed by victims.
- Preys on lack of awareness: Many employees haven’t received adequate security awareness training and don’t recognize the warning signs of social engineering attempts.
- Creates legitimate-looking urgency: Attackers often impersonate executives or create time-sensitive scenarios that pressure victims to act quickly without verifying authenticity.
Explore how social engineering targets enterprise environments, and how to reduce human risk, with the 2025 Human Risk Behavior Snapshot: 2nd Edition.
How Do You Prevent Social Engineering?
Protecting your organization from social engineering requires a combination of employee education and security controls:
Security Awareness Training
Employees are the first line of defense against social engineering. Effective training programs should include regular phishing simulations, up-to-date threat education, and practical guidance on identifying suspicious communications. Building a security-aware culture empowers employees to recognize and report potential attacks before damage occurs.
Technical Security Controls
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Adds an additional verification layer beyond passwords, preventing unauthorized access even if credentials are compromised.
Email Security Solutions
Filter spam, flag suspicious messages, detect potential phishing attempts, and provide employees with easy ways to report questionable emails.
Least Privilege Access
Limit employee access to only the systems and data necessary for their roles, restricting how far attackers can move if initial access is gained.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
Provides 24×7 monitoring of endpoints, networks, and cloud environments alongside user behavior to detect and respond to suspicious activity, such as unusual login locations or data exfiltration attempts.
Warning Signs Employees Should Watch For
Train your team to be skeptical of communications that exhibit:
- Unexpected requests from unknown or unusual senders
- Urgent language creating pressure to act immediately
- Requests for sensitive information, credentials, or financial transfers
- Suspicious links, attachments, or sender details
- Poor grammar, spelling errors, or formatting inconsistencies
- Reluctance to verify identity through established channels
Understand the role social engineering plays in large-scale cyber attacks with the Arctic Wolf 2025 Threat Report.
Explore the value of security awareness training in reducing human risk at the Arctic Wolf Cybersecurity Awareness Month Summit.
