Social Engineering – What is this new phrase you have been hearing about? Social engineering, in the context of information security, refers to psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information.
This is becoming very common and more and more people are falling prey to this type of fraud. We just had another insured fall victim to this. It was at the end of the work day, almost 5 O’Clock when the office worker received an email from her boss asking her to wire $20,000 right away. In a rush to get out of the office and to get this done for her boss she quickly wired $20,000 into the account that was in the email.
By the next morning it was realized that the email wasn’t really from her boss but an email that was so close to her bosses email that it was hard to notice the difference at a glance. A call was placed to her bank and then to the receiving bank that this was fraudulent. The receiving bank would not pull the money out of their client’s account even though it was obtained fraudulently.
It is important to check your business owners policy to see if you would be covered for something like this. If not please contact your Professional Underwriters Inc. agent for a cyber quote. People say “This won’t happen to us.” but it does.