Overview#
Manipulating people to gain unauthorized access or information. Includes phishing, pretexting, tailgating, and baiting tactics.
Core objectives#
- Establish shared definitions of Social Engineering for security, engineering, and leadership teams.
- Connect Social Engineering activities to measurable risk reduction and resilience goals.
- Provide onboarding notes so new team members can quickly understand how Social Engineering works here.
Implementation notes#
- Identify the primary owner for Social Engineering, the data sources involved, and the systems affected.
- Document the minimum viable process, tooling, and runbooks that keep Social Engineering healthy.
- Map Social Engineering practices to standards such as ISO/IEC 27001, NIST CSF, or CIS Controls.
Operational signals#
- Leading indicators: early warnings that Social Engineering might degrade (e.g., backlog growth, noisy alerts, or missed SLAs).
- Lagging indicators: realized impact that shows Social Engineering failed or needs investment (e.g., incidents, audit findings).
- Feedback loops: retrospectives and metrics reviews that tune Social Engineering continuously.
Related practices#
- Align Social Engineering with defense-in-depth planning, threat modeling, and disaster recovery tests.
- Communicate updates to stakeholders through concise briefs, dashboards, and internal FAQs.
- Pair Social Engineering improvements with tabletop exercises to validate expectations.