If I had a dime for every time someone told me, “I clicked on a link, but I didn’t think it was a big deal,” I could purchase every router in my office twice. One simple fact is the basis of social engineering attacks: humans make mistakes. And believe me — I have seen everything you can think of in my three boom-and-bust cycles in IT and cybersecurity trenches.

Here’s the thing about technology: It’s only as smart/efficient/effective (pick one) as the people operating it. Your firewalls can be dialed in perfectly and your endpoint detection sharp as a tack, but the moment Karen from accounting hands her password to “IT support” on a Friday afternoon? Game over.

So let’s get into how these social engineering “tricks of the trade” work, how they worked (even recently) and what organizations like yours can do to push back.

Common Tactics

Social engineering isn’t new. It is as old as scams themselves. What’s interesting, however, is how well attackers have learned to merge psychological manipulation with technical proficiency.

So the question stands, how to do this? Here are the most common techniques I have seen through the ages:

• Phishing
• The granddaddy of all social engineering attacks.
• Still receiving those emails about “urgent password resets?”
• Attackers lure you with urgency or curiosity.
• Tempted to click? One slip—and they’ll have your credentials faster than you can relieve yourself about that click.
• Pretexting
• It’s more about writing a convincing narrative.
• A caller says it’s your company’s tech support.
• They require “verification information” to “fix an issue.”
• Boom. You’ve given the keys to the kingdom to someone.
• Baiting
• Have you ever discovered a random USB thumb drive in your office’s parking lot?
• In this case, curiosity kills your network. Plug it in, and—surprise! —it’s malicious.
• Tailgating or Piggybacking
• Someone talks their way around your physical security controls. (The good old “I forgot my badge” trick still works way too well.)
• If a cyberattacker walks into your server room, no firewall is going to save you.
• Vishing (Voice Phishing)
• This one’s picking up steam. Attackers reach you directly — pretending to be IT, HR, or even a bank representative.
• Pro tip: If your bank calls you and asks for sensitive information, hang up and call them back with the number listed on the bank’s website. Just never trust calls like that coming inbound.

There’s more, of course, but these are the ones I’ve personally watched wreak havoc over and over. And yeah, they’re evolving.

Real-World Examples

Attack #1: That Invoice Looks…Phishy

At the start of this year, one of my consulting clients (a medium-sized manufacturing company) called me in a total state of panic. Someone broke into their procurement manager’s email. They PTO’ed perfectly credible fake invoices to the accounts payable team, asking for immediate transfers to “new vendor accounts.”

By the time I became involved, $50,000 had disappeared into a labyrinth of offshore bank accounts. That’s the genius of a simple phishing attack: no malware, no advanced exploit—just perfectly timed psychological manipulation.

What gave it away? Typographical errors in the false invoices. Details matter.

Attack #2: Banks Aren’t Immune

Earlier this year, while we were helping one of the banks implement zero-trust architecture, it came under a vishing attack. An attacker tricked a junior employee into thinking over the phone that they needed credentials to “test a system patch.” The junior followed suit, granting the attacker access to an initial foothold. Fortunately, the bank’s monitoring systems detected abnormal activity early enough to limit the damage — but not before a tense 72 hours of remediation.

Lesson learned? It is an equally poor use of time for junior staff and senior executives. Maybe more.

Prevention Strategies

Here’s the fact: human behavior can’t really be patched. But you can try to make it more difficult for attackers to take advantage of people.

Below is a template I have used to great success:

1. Deploy Clear Processes
   • Authentication rules — Each request to access something sensitive is double-checked against internal mechanisms already in place.
   • Financial transaction safeguards — Require a second approval process for transfers beyond a certain amount.
2. Limit Privileges
   • Cut off employees’ access to resources they don’t absolutely require.
   • Segment your network. If your accounting software gets hacked, it shouldn’t collapse your file servers.
3. Technology as a Redundant Support System
   • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): All your MFA. Every one of these systems — email, VPN, even cloud file storage — should have MFA.
   • Email filtering: Invest in solutions that block known phishing domains and scan email links before they’re clicked.
4. Perform Regular Penetration Testing
   • Phish campaign simulations.
   • Write down every time you failed — and close the holes before actual hackers take advantage of them.

Awareness Training

This is where the rubber meets the road.

You have to train your people. (No exceptions are made, including for the C-suite.)

The Steps for Awareness Training I Always Take:

1. What is social engineering?

   Show real-world examples. Show them firsthand the tactics at play.

2. Learn from past mistakes

   If your organization has already been compromised, tell those stories. They’re bittersweet but unforgettable.

3. Train employees to verify everything
   • Trust incoming requests? There is none.
   • No blind clicks on links.
   • No hitting “download” unless 100% certain of the source.
4. How to stress password hygiene (without driving them nuts)
   • Make passwords long enough to be secure yet short enough for humans to remember.
   • Adopt passphrases instead of silly strings of characters.
5. Test them frequently

   Have you ever heard of phishing simulations? Generate them — quarterly, at the least monthly. Watch who nips and correct the behavior right then and there (before it’s too late).

Quick Take

If you don’t have time to read it all, this is what you really need to know:

• Social engineering attacks are pervasive.
• Technology isn’t enough. Your greatest underminer is human behavior.
• Protect, adjust, and keep educating and training staff on security.
• MFA, segmentation, and least privilege policies are a must.

This is a never-ending fight but one that you cannot afford to lose.

A Final Thought

Back in the early 2000s, when the Slammer worm struck, I thought the top problem was just going to be virus-riddled executable files. Life seemed simpler. Today, attackers are more sophisticated, employing psychological tactics in ways I couldn’t have imagined in those early days.

But here’s the thing: Humans can learn. All mistakes we make help us learn an important lesson. And as long as we’re willing to do the work — establishing solid processes, training users, staying on top of changing threats — we can outsmart them.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my third cup of coffee of the morning is beginning to wear off. Stay vigilant.