Social engineering is the art of persuasion. Mostly, this is a good thing. Misused, it can have disastrous effects.

Rachel Tobac is a cyber social engineer. She is skilled at persuading people to do what she wants, rather than what they know they ought to do. Does this make her a hacker? “Yes. I am a hacker. I hack people. I hack people over the phone, via email, by text message, across social media – and occasionally in person.” Social engineers hack people rather than computers.

She is now co-founder and CEO of SocialProof Security.

SecurityWeek spoke with Tobac to better understand this concept of people hacking. Specifically, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of social engineering. The ‘why’ part is simple. Social engineering is the starting point for almost all adversarial cyberattacks.

Social engineering

Social engineering is widely misunderstood and often underrated. “It is part of the fabric of society,” explained Tobac ...