How to Identify and Prevent Social Engineering Attacks: The Human Factor in Cybersecurity in 2025

As society and our daily lives become more intertwined through connectivity, social engineering is continuing to be one of the biggest cybersecurity threats in 2025.

Exploiting human psychology, cyber criminals find ways to manipulate people into revealing confidential data which could lead to serious consequences for businesses today.

Social Engineering is becoming an epidemic which highlights the needs for organizations to strengthen their cyber defences.

In this blog, you will learn what social engineering is, types of social engineering attacks you should be aware of and discover how you can mitigate these attacks that take advantage of gaps and vulnerabilities in human psychology.

What is Social Engineering?

The definition of Social Engineering

Social engineering is a deceptive method that is used by cyberattacks to manipulate people into divulging sensitive information or to get them to do something that might compromise security.

Typically, social engineering uses psychological manipulation rather than sophisticated hacking, which means that the weakest link in the organization tend to be the primary victims.

With high profile phishing attacks becoming more prevalent, cyber criminals continue to demonstrate the negative consequences such an attack can have, such as a data breach that could cost an organization millions of dollars.

As the impact of phishing attacks can vary depending on human psychology elements, employees can be targeted and organizations should do what they can to prevent this. You should provide regular training or check ups to ensure that your team has the latest knowledge and insights and be able to detect signs of phishing attacks.

Common Social Engineering Attacks in 2025:

What are the commonly seen types of social engineering attacks?

Before learning the signs and symptoms that help you detect that you are a target of phishing attacks, you should have a fundamental understanding of the most common types of social engineering attacks in 2025.

Here are the most common types of social engineering attacks you should watch out for:

• Phishing and Spear-Phishing: These attacks typically involve fraudulent emails that appear to be coming from a trusted source (AKA: Spoofing), who trick people into revealing personal data or to get them to click on a malicious link.
  
  Now that we’re heading into 2025,  attackers are making full use of AI tools to create more sophisticated  messages that are harder to detect and sound mor convincing and personable.
  
  Spear-phishing is more sophisticated and targeted and tends to target  specific people or organizations.

• Business Email Compromise (BEC): This is when attackers find a way into corporate email systems and typically impersonates specific executives within a company or pretends to be an important vendor to request financial transactions that seem urgent.

• Quid Pro Quo and Baiting Attacks:  In this form of phishing, attackers trick you into thinking they have something that you want, such as a free software or service offering in exchange for access to sensitive data or install a malware on your system. Quid pro quo attacks might involve a call with a fake IT professional while a baiting attack might stem from infected removable hard drives or USBs on public computers.

• Pretexting: as you can imagine pretexting involves a fake scenario (also known as a pretext) to gather sensitive data from the victim. For example, it could be a fake survey or someone pretending to be someone important in order to build trust and then get them to act on something that might compromise security.

• Tailgating or Piggybacking: Piggybacking is when an unauthorized individual follows someone with access into a restricted zone. Its as simple as someone being courteous to let someone into a building (commonly seen in apartments and condos). To fight back against this, you must enforce physical security policies and instruct tenants to not let strangers into a building.

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How to Identify Social Engineering Attacks

What are the symptoms of social engineering attacks.

Detecting social engineering symptoms early on can prevent them from being successful in their attack. Here are some of the warning signs that you must keep an eye out for:

• Suspicious Emails and Requests: Urgent requests that ask for personal information, unexpected links, discrepancies in email addresses to name a few are all warning signs that could reveal that a phishing attack is taking place. You should verify the identity of the sender before acting on the email.
• Behavioral Anomalies: Be on the look out for weird behaviours or unusual requests from colleagues, vendors or partners that are unexpected. For example, if a sender doesn’t sound like their usual self, you should take extra precautions.
• Social Media Exploitation: Cyberattacks are always looking for information and sensitive data on social media to get as much information as possible on a target. Be careful what you post online and practice safe online hygiene as much as possible.
• Unsolicited Offers and Requests: Whether you’re getting what seems like a free gift or a request that doesn’t seem right, you should watch out for these offers or requests as they can be a precursor to a social engineering attack.

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Best Practices to Prevent Social Engineering Attacks

How to Prevent Social Engineering Attacks

To protect yourself, your business and your employees from social engineering attacks, you must address your security policies and how people in your organization approaches technology and human behaviour. Here are ways you can mitigate your risks of a compromise due to social engineering:

• Employee Training and Awareness Programs: By conducting regular employee awareness training sessions, you can educate your employees about various topics such as phishing, social engineering and promote skepticism as a defence tactic. You can use real world examples and conduct simulations.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Implementation: multi factor authentication can prevent unauthorized access should credentials be compromised.
• Incident Response Planning: a detailed incident response plan is critical to ensure a swift and effective response to any potential attack. Your response plan should be looked at and updated on a regular basis to keep your organization’s security policies and procedures updated with the latest best practices that addresses the latest threats and vulnerabilities.
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• Strict Access Controls: your organization should implement strong access control measure to limit any damage from unauthorized access.  You should opt the principle of least privilege which means you should only give the minimum amount of access possible for your employees to do their job.
• Regular Security Audits:  you should also regularly assess your organization’s security posture by conducting regular audits and address any potential vulnerabilities you identify.
• Encourage a Security-First Culture: encourage a culture that promotes security. You should empower your employees to speak up if they notice something suspicious or potentially threatening to the organization.
• Use Advanced Email Filtering and Anti-Phishing Tools: By using more sophisticated email filtering and anti-phishing tools, you can automatically detect and block any fraudulent emails. You should actively monitor and update these tools to ensure you are protected from the latest threats.

Protect Your Business Through & Stay 5 Steps Ahead of Cyber Criminals

As you can see, it is vital for organizations to adopt more proactive cybersecurity measures and understand the fragility of human psychology to protect themselves from social engineering attacks. By prioritizing training and education and by implementing stronger security measures, you can significantly minimize the risk of someone in your organization from falling victim to a social engineering attack.

For businesses looking for tailored cybersecurity solutions, contact DNSnetworks for a consultation!

Protecting your business in 2025 requires a collective approach-empower your team, boost your defences and stay 5 steps ahead of cyber criminals.

Contact us now!