Sociotechnical test (PHISHING)

This type of penetration testing is carried out using social engineering methods. The main purpose of the test is to identify the level of awareness of the customer’s personnel about information security requirements. During the testing process, the reaction of users and information security personnel to organizational penetration methods used by attackers is tested.

Social engineering methods are often used by attackers and are usually aimed at end users. As a result of a successful attack, an attacker can gain control of workstations, obtain confidential customer documents, use customer resources to organize attacks on the systems of other companies, send spam, etc.

Organizational aspects of information security are the most important component of the protection system and, often, ordinary users are the weakest link. This service will allow us to identify those organizational aspects of information security that the customer should pay attention to first.

The results obtained during the course of this service can become the basis for the development of a Security Awareness Program, with enhanced focused on the problem areas identified during testing. This service is also used for testing the effectiveness of an existing Customer Awareness Program.

In general, the order of work is as follows:

Social engineering methods that will be used to conduct the test are agreed upon with the customer in advance. The following methods can be used:

• Distribution of email/IM messages on behalf of anonymous users and customer employees, containing links to web resources with executable code, containing executable code in the body of the letter, containing a request to change passwords, share passwords or personal information, etc.
• Spot check of the implementation of the “clean desk” policy (sticky notes with passwords that are not locked in the absence of the console user, the presence of confidential documents in the office accessible to visitors, cell phones and PDAs left unattended);
• Calls to users on behalf of IT and information security personnel with requests to obtain/change passwords, send confidential documents, etc.
• Identifying user groups to be targeted and tailoring testing methods for each group.
• Analysis and consolidation of the results of various tests.

The result of the work will be a report containing:

• Conclusions for management, containing an overall assessment of the level of user awareness.
• Test procedure.
• List of key problem areas (including information on all user activities in each target group).
• Recommendations for eliminating identified vulnerabilities.