I published the slides to my presentation “How attackers use social engineering to bypass your defenses,” which shows numerous examples of real-world social engineering attacks. These materials are designed to help you improve the relevance of your security awareness training and to adjust your data defenses by revisiting your perspective of the threat landscape. They cover techniques such as:

• The use of alternative channels of communication
• Focus on personally-relevant messages
• The principle of social compliance in potential victims
• People’s reliance on security mechanisms

Why bother breaking down the door if you can simply ask the person inside to let you in? Social engineering works, both during penetration testing and as part of real-world attacks. This briefing explores how attackers are using social engineering to compromise defenses. It presents specific and concrete examples of how social engineering techniques succeeded at bypassing information security defenses.

— Lenny Zeltser