social engineering: advantages and disadvantages

Social engineering is a collection of techniques used to manipulate people into revealing information they would not otherwise have revealed willingly.

The advantages of knowing how social engineering techniques are effective include:

• prevents unauthorized access from occurring
• prevents possible information theft
• prevents possible identify theft
• prevents the possibility of downloading malicious software on unsuspecting user systems
• preserves the integrity of information systems

The disadvantages of being uninformed with respect to social engineering techniques include:

• possible data theft (bank account numbers, social security numbers, user IDs/passwords, etc.)
• possible identity theft
• possible corruption of data
• possible unplanned system downtime
• possible (physical) security threat