What You Get When You Invest in Social Engineering Testing with Mitnick Security

You’ve educated your team on the dangers of cybercriminals by putting them through social engineering training. 

But was the investment worth it? Did your employees actually learn how to recognize a phishing email, how to craft and use stronger passwords and how to better protect your systems?

Now is the time to test their retention. But the problem is, not all social engineering testers are equal in terms of expertise, skill and perseverance. 

When testing your employees' social engineering readiness, your teams need simulated attacks that could come from a serious engineer— not corny scam emails that only scratch the surface of what a real bad actor is capable of.

And that’s just the start. Here are all the reasons our white hat social engineers at Mitnick Security stand apart from the competition:

 

1. Senior engineers. 

When you hire a company to conduct social engineering testing, you want a seasoned team of professionals. Unfortunately, other testing companies often take the easy way out: hiring one or two senior-level engineers to manage over lesser experienced testers. That means you never know who is crafting the phishing email or if they have the practical experience to build a successful social engineering campaign. 

With Mitnick Security, we only hire senior social engineering testers with at least 10 years of experience. This exclusive dedication to only top-notch talent is a huge reason we boast a 100% success rate for breaching systems using social engineering amongst small to multi-million dollar corporations. 

 

2. Above and beyond OSINT.

Real social engineers rely heavily on open-source intelligence (OSINT) to weave a convincing narrative in phishing scams or to break technical defenses. They often use names of people you know or high-level managers within your company, industry-specific language/lingo and other Internet-accessible information to gain trust and authority

The problem is, many social engineering testers skimp on the pre-attack phase of the social engineering process— only doing high-level OSINT research to skip the hard work. They think that by sending more phishes to more employees they’re bound to get more folks to fall for the attacks, but in reality, real social engineers care more about the minute details of their attack— focusing on catching the big fish instead of a net-full of dead ends. For instance, cracking into an executive-level admin’s account may lead to juicier data than lower-tier access. Sure, the work the strength testers put into an initial plan may take longer, but the pay-off for their strategic investment is sure to be more fruitful. 

Sometimes after running a social engineering test, it becomes evident you need to add more specific training to your security awareness program. Explore training programs with Kevin Mitnick here.

 

3. Detailed reporting.

When you run a social engineering test, you want more than just the percentage of employees who fell for a phishing campaign. After all, your results should empower you with the insights you need to make security improvements— and for that, you need to know the specifics of the attacks, where certain teams and individuals struggled (not to mention where they excelled!) and how serious your human vulnerability factor is. 

We understand that our pentesting and social engineering testing reports need to break down the exact tactics. That’s why we grab actual screenshots of phishing emails and attach transcripts of recordings from phishing phone calls, in addition to step-by-step attack explanations. We silo by the department and even individual employees to illustrate the exact methods we used, your team’s responses, and how we ultimately got in, or where we were stopped and pivoted our tactics.

 

4. Key takeaways.

Of course, a white hat social engineer should do more than just compromise your system and call it a day. The best engineers offer their wisdom to remediate your risks— beyond a broad brush stroke— offering specific solutions for your unique security posture. 

That’s why every social engineering strength testing report from Mitnick Security contains narratives of each attack vector and detailed recommendations for mitigating your vulnerabilities based on criticality. While other social engineering tests may also include suggestions for improving your security, our team takes it a step further by helping you to understand why, without the tech talk. Without proper context as to how exactly we tricked your employees and got into your system, the recommendations often fall on deaf ears. 

Mitnick_PenetrationTesting-Infographic_remedial-actions-chart-example

Read more about what’s included in both our pentesting and social engineering testing reports here.

 

Are Your Employees as Prepared as You Think?

The only way you’ll see if your company is prepared for a social engineering attack is to run simulated campaigns, which test your employees’ readiness without the real risk. 

See how your teams would stack up against our white hat hackers by exploring our Social Engineering Testing Services today. 

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Topics: Social Engineering, vishing, social engineering attacks

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