OREANDA-NEWS. A representative of the international higher education school of information security HackerU reported that in 2019, the damage to Russian companies from social engineering methods in cybersecurity amounted to 1.26 billion roubles (more than 20 million US dollars).

Experts estimated the frequency of using various methods used by hackers in Russia. According to them, 70 % of successful attacks are based on social engineering methods. Social engineering is a method of gaining access to information based on the use of manipulative psychological techniques. Hackers use it to coax employees to provide information or gain access to it bypassing the security system.

“Large businesses, especially financial institutions, have developed a large number of effective mechanisms for detecting and preventing digital attacks; now the main vulnerability is people,” Alexander Avakyants, Managing Director of the HackerU International School of IT and Information Security in Russia, explained. He said that 76 % of employees in the country are people over 30 years who got an educated in the era before the digital transformation and now do not have the skills to protect data.