Social engineering

Social engineering refers to techniques designed to fool human beings into providing information or taking an action which leads to the subsequent breach in information systems security. Examples of social engineering include telephoning the IT help desk and pretending to be an employee and asking for your password to be reset in order to gain unauthorised access to an employee's computer account and the network; or sending an e–mail impersonating a victim's bank in order to get the victim to click on a phishing URL and provide their bank account password into the fake attacker-controlled website. The term is intended to make a distinction from computer engineering or software engineering, in that social engineering uniquely attacks the human component of an information system.