Individuals and organizations need to have high-quality information
and system security practices. These practices are critical to protecting oneself
or a company from computer security incidents such as social engineering, pharming,
computer viruses, phishing or smishing, HTTPS phishing, ransomware, and malware. Familiarity with practices to combat these security incidents will be essential to protecting personal and/or company information from hackers and scammers.
Social
engineering is a form of complex cyberattacks to take advantage of people and
get them to reveal sensitive information about themselves or their organization.
This type of security threat takes place between people, which is what gives it
the social aspect. It depends on predicting how people behave in
social interactions. The engineering aspect comes from threat actors
manipulating social interactions to accomplish what they want. (Tech+, 2025) Computer systems are
vulnerable to social engineering through social media, computers that are unattended
while unlocked, and shoulder surfing. Purchasing things you didn’t want to buy,
sending emails in your name, and compromising your other accounts are the
symptoms and damage that social engineering can inflict after compromising a
system. To protect a computer system or network from social engineering, you
should only accept friend requests from people that you know and be mindful of
the information that you post (whether it should be shared privately or with
everyone). You should avoid posting any personally identifiable information.
Another way to protect yourself from social engineering is to keep your
computer and phone locked whenever you are not using them. Just in case you
forget to lock your things after use, you can set password-protected screen
savers that automatically lock your devices after a certain amount of time.
Lastly, you can use privacy screens to prevent others from watching you type in
your passwords. (Tech+, 2025)
Phishing
and smishing is a way that scammers send communication that looks like it comes
from a real business, in an attempt to trick users into giving away their confidential
information, such as banking information or passwords. A message is sent with a
link to a compromised or counterfeit site. (Tech+, 2025) With phishing, an
email blast representing a large business with lots of customers is sent to
thousands of users, which strengthens the scammer’s chances of finding a user
who has an account with the imposed business and will fall for the scam. With
smishing, attackers send text messages posing as a reputable company or service
provider to warn users about unauthorized activity. The practice of sending
text alerts is common with legitimate companies, making smishing attacks highly
effective. There are several types of smishing, including account verification
scams, prize or lottery scams, tech support scams, tax scams, bank fraud
alerts, and service cancellation. Each of these involves clicking a link, paying
a fee, or calling a suggested phone number. (Tech+, 2025) Computer systems are
vulnerable to phishing and smishing because clicking these links could lead to
networks being hacked or spreading viruses and worms. The symptoms and damage that
phishing and smishing can inflict after compromising a system are data
breaches, financial loss, malware infections, and reputational damage. (Silva, 2024) To protect a
computer system or network from phishing and smishing, employees should be
provided with security awareness training, where they are taught how to
identify phishing emails, how to recognize suspicious links and attachments,
and the ways they can report potential threats. Another way to protect systems
and networks from phishing and smishing is to implement email security
solutions that can screen and filter out phishing emails to prevent them from
reaching users’ inboxes. (Silva, 2024)
With
so many different computer security incidents that pose threats to computer systems
and networks, both organizations and individuals need to have a
thorough understanding of network security. Safety measures should be in place, and individuals should always follow these measures. Being equipped
with the knowledge and skills to recognize threats and the ways to combat them
will be critical to protecting both personal and company information.
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