TITLE:
The Role of Social Engineering in Cybersecurity and Its Impact
AUTHORS:
Bandar S. Almutairi, Abdurahman Alghamdi
KEYWORDS:
Cybersecurity, Attacks, Social Engineering, Security, Awareness of Cybersecurity
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Information Security,
Vol.13 No.4,
October
28,
2022
ABSTRACT: An attacker has several options for breaking through
an organization’s information security protections.
Human factors are determined to be the source of some of the worst cyber-attacks every day in
every business. The human method, often known as “social
engineering”, is the hardest to cope with. This paper examines many types of social engineering. The aim of this
study was to ascertain the level of awareness of social engineering, provide appropriate solutions to problems to
reduce those engineering risks, and avoid obstacles that could prevent
increasing awareness of the dangers of social engineering—Shaqra University (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). A
questionnaire was developed and surveyed 508 employees working at different organizations.
The overall Cronbach’s alpha was 0.756, which very good value, the correlation
coefficient between each of the items is
statistically significant at 0.01 level. The study showed that 63.4% of the
surveyed sample had no idea about social engineering. 67.3% of the total samples had no
idea about social engineering threats. 42.1% have a weak knowledge of social engineering and only 7.5% of the sample had a good
knowledge of social engineering. 64.7% of the male did not know what social engineering is. 68.0% of the administrators did not
know what social engineering is. Employees who did not take courses showed statistically significant differences.