Destructive Social Engineering as a Threat to Economic Security: Methods Used and the Scale of the Phenomenon

Abstract

The growing interest in researching the topic of defining the essence of social engineering as a threat to economic security is due to the increasing complexity of the information and technical components of the life of modern society. At the same time, with the complication of all processes existing in society, information threats are becoming more complex and increasing. Information threats arising from the outside have the ability to penetrate the most protected systems of organizations of various levels, realizing the goals of the subjects of hacking. The situation is getting more complicated every year also because, as a rule, the goals of such incursions into the sphere of information security are extremely destructive. In the course of the study, we analyzed six methods of social engineering combining fraudulent schemes of different levels of complexity, which are currently used in a destructive manner and negatively affect economic security. The scale of information leaks in the financial sector in 2019–2020 is illustrated by data type, intent, culprit, and type of incident. We found that social engineering methods are adaptive, they change in accordance with fluid environmental conditions, and therefore, security personnel need to stay up-to-date on current methods and schemes to prevent hacking activities.