The Role of Social Engineering in Cybersecurity and Its Impact

Abstract

An attacker has several options for breaking through an organization’s information security protections. Human factors are determined to be the source of some of the worst cyber-attacks every day in every business. The human method, often known as “social engineering”, is the hardest to cope with. This paper examines many types of social engineering. The aim of this study was to ascertain the level of awareness of social engineering, provide appropriate solutions to problems to reduce those engineering risks, and avoid obstacles that could prevent increasing awareness of the dangers of social engineering—Shaqra University (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). A questionnaire was developed and surveyed 508 employees working at different organizations. The overall Cronbach’s alpha was 0.756, which very good value, the correlation coefficient between each of the items is statistically significant at 0.01 level. The study showed that 63.4% of the surveyed sample had no idea about social engineering. 67.3% of the total samples had no idea about social engineering threats. 42.1% have a weak knowledge of social engineering and only 7.5% of the sample had a good knowledge of social engineering. 64.7% of the male did not know what social engineering is. 68.0% of the administrators did not know what social engineering is. Employees who did not take courses showed statistically significant differences.