A to Z of social engineering techniques

On a roll from yesterday's A-to-Z catalog of scams, con-tricks and frauds, I'm writing another A-Z today, this time focusing on social engineering techniques and methods.  

Yesterday's piece was about what they do.  Today's is about how they do it.

Given my background and the research we've done, it's surprisingly easy to find appropriate entries for most letters of the alphabet, albeit with a bit of creativity and lateral thinking needed for some (e.g. "Xtreme social engineering"!).  That's part of the challenge of writing any A to Z listing ... and part of the allure for the reader. 

What will the Z entry be? As of this moment, I don't actually know but I will come up with zomething!

Both awareness pieces impress upon the reader the sheer variety of social engineering, while at the same time the alphabetical sequence provides a logical order to what would otherwise be a confusing jumble of stuff. Making people aware of the breadth and diversity of social engineering is one of the key learning objectives for December's awareness module. Providing structured, useful, innovative awareness content is what we do.

We hope to leave a lasting impression that almost any social interaction or communication could be social engineering - any email or text message, any phone call or conversation, any glance or frown, any blog item (am I manipulating your thoughts? Concentrate on the eyes. You are starting to feel drowsy ...)

Yes, hypnosis will make an appearance in today's A-Z.  It's not entirely serious!

Tomorrow, after completing the second, I'd like to complete the set with a third piece concerning the controls against social engineering. Can we come up with a reasonable list of 26? Come back tomorrow to find out how that turns out.