Social engineering

Cyberthreat

In the context of cyber attacks, 'social engineering' means deceiving employees into voluntarily making fraudulent payments or other transactions, by causing them to believe that the fraudulent transactions are legitimate.

Frauds socially engineered

"... the frauds were successful because, at the final stage of the process, the victims’ employees were either directly or indirectly ‘socially engineered’ into willingly handing over company money, because they believed that they were engaged in legitimate transactions.

In their defence, there are some ‘very good reasons’ why they were so easy to manipulate."

The Treasurer magazine, March 2017, p39 - Lesley Meall, freelance journalist specialising in technology and finance.

Sometimes written 'social-engineering'.

See also

• CEO fraud
• Cyber attack
• Fraud
• Layering
• Phishing
• Ransomware
• Spoofing
• Whaling