Cybersecurity Glossary
Social Engineering
Manipulating a person into granting access or breaking a rule, rather than defeating a technical control.
What Social Engineering means
Social engineering exploits helpfulness, urgency and authority. It may arrive as an email, a phone call, a text message or a person in a high visibility vest asking to be let into the server room. The common thread is a plausible story and pressure to act before checking.
Why Social Engineering matters for small businesses and nonprofits
Every technical control you buy can be undone by one helpful colleague who resets a password for a convincing caller. Small organisations are especially exposed because everybody knows everybody, so an unfamiliar request is easier to dress up as legitimate.
What to do about Social Engineering
- Define a verification step for password resets and access requests, and allow no exceptions
- Give staff explicit permission to slow down and check, so refusing feels safe
- Rehearse a scenario, because recognition is faster than reasoning under pressure
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