The human OS: Overdue for a social engineering patch

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.csoonline.com/article/2824563/social-engineering/the-human-os-overdue-for-a-social-engineering-patch.html

By Taylor Armerding
CSO
Oct 13, 2014

It sounds like the operating system that really needs some serious 
security patches is the human one.

While technology giants like Microsoft, Google and Apple regularly crank 
out updates, patches and fixes for zero-day vulnerabilities and other 
threats, the weakest link in the security chain -- the careless or 
clueless employee -- remains the weakest.

That is in large measure because there is no technology that can prevent 
someone falling for increasingly sophisticated social engineering attacks. 
As has been regularly reported during the past year, some of the biggest 
data breaches in history have been launched by attackers fooling an 
employee.

And that is despite years of exhortations by experts that worker security 
awareness training needs to be much more than a perfunctory lecture or 
PowerPoint presentation once every six months or so.

In a recent flash poll conducted by Dark Reading, more than half of 633 
respondents said, "the most dangerous social engineering threat to their 
organizations was due to a lack of employee awareness."

[...]



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