The FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report reveals a skyrocketing increase in ransomware attacks targeting critical infrastructure, which includes sectors such as healthcare, communications, energy, and financial services. With phishing and social engineering tactics enabling many of these breaches, experts urge organizations to bolster their defenses to mitigate this increasing risk.

Social engineering is a type of attack where scammers take advantage of trust to steal personal information, money, or access. It’s alarmingly effective, and methods are only getting more sophisticated. To help you recognize these scams, we’ve compiled a list of the most common social engineering tactics.

While technology empowers us in many ways, it also opens up vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious actors. When breaching your systems, hackers will typically look for the path of least resistance, which is often through these common entry points.

While business owners may invest heavily in malware protection, they often overlook the vulnerabilities inherent in human behavior. Social engineering, a cunning strategy that exploits human trust and psychology, requires little or no sophisticated technology, yet can inflict significant damage by luring unsuspecting individuals into divulging sensitive information.

With so many different IT security terms and concepts that you need to learn when running a business, where should you start? Diving into cybersecurity can be challenging, but learning about the most commonly used terms in IT security is a good place to start.

Experts are constantly creating new security systems to protect individuals and businesses from hackers. From those who want to attend popular events like the Olympics to avoiding an angry boss, hackers are preying on gullible victims to circumvent network security systems and steal sensitive information.

As long as there have been salesmen, there have been scammers trying to sell useless products. Traditionally the elderly have fallen prey to cold-call fraud, but now scam artists are getting tech-smart, and it's the younger generation of computer users who are falling for scams.

The technology of crime is evolving, and criminals get smarter every day. But when technology proves too difficult to exploit, criminals resort to manipulating information from their targets via social engineering. This burgeoning field allows criminals to trick people into disclosing sensitive information such as passwords and bank information.

As the spectacle and competitive atmosphere of the Rio Olympic Games have drawn the world’s attention, hackers who use social engineering are inching closer to our private information. Although our systems may be prepared for the likes of malware and worms, social engineering is a different beast of its own.