A client and I had a discussion today about online safety when shopping or banking. She expressed some concern about the VA security breach last year where 1000's of our vets had their identities at risk. And a few years ago we heard about the massive loss of customer information at a huge marketing company.
None of these events were due to "computer hacking" in the way most of us think of hacking. An individual being able to work their way into a secure computer is extremely difficult and highly unlikely, but with a little social engineering the job gets much easier. Social engineering can best be defined as the act of getting a person who works for a company or organization to make a slip or bad judgment and let an unknown person or someone with questionable credentials sit at one of their computers. Or even works, laptops with sensitive information being stolen or lost.
These are examples of social engineering. Computers do a pretty good job, and getting better all the time, of securing our data and providing a safe haven for personal information of all kinds. However, if a criminal master mind is able to get someone on the 'inside' to grant access through trickery and clever dialog, then the prospect of a breach in security increases exponentially. To read more about social engineering, check out these sources:
Links:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_%28security%29
[2] http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9028960&intsrc=news_ts_head
[3] https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=rick@yourpcpartner.com&item_name=Buy
[4] http://www.helpmerick.com/website_free_stuff_you_dont_need.htm
[5] http://www.helpmerick.com/another_sony_proprietary_technology_bites_dust.htm