Social Engineering in IT Security: Tools, Tactics, and Techniques

10	Defense Against the Dark Arts

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

—Helen Keller

There is no 100 percent defense against social engineering.

However, there are one or two things you can do.

It is notoriously difficult to defend against social engineering because it targets the weakest link in the security chain: the users. Con artists and fraudsters have been ripping us off for time immemorial, and yet we still fall for their scams. Once we wise up to certain attacks, social engineers devise new ways to exploit us. We are not machines, and we cannot ...