Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED)

A proactive tactic called Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) is used to lessen the risk of being the target of social engineers. We must first comprehend social engineering in order better to comprehend active social engineering defense (ASED).

Social Engineering Attack:

Without the use of malware or other computer hacking tools, social engineering is a powerful technique for hackers to take advantage of computer systems. Ethical hackers must know how to get attention on social media and human interaction to their advantage in order to successfully perform a social engineering hack. Since social engineering is employed in almost every stage of a cybersecurity project, it is an important talent for security professionals, especially those in the IT industry. Utilizing psychological tricks to access networks or systems or further sensitive data is known as social engineering. The main purposes of social engineering are data collection and gaining access to personal accounts like emails and social media accounts like Facebook. The hackers create phishing pages that closely resemble legitimate ones in an effort to persuade the user that they are authentic and reliable.

For more information please refer: What is Social Engineering?

Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED):

A security method known as Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) continuously observes staff members looking for anomalous behavior that might point to a social engineering attack. In essence, it is a procedure that aids firms in guarding against social engineering assaults. Human observation is a crucial component of ASED; routine staff surveillance of logins, device use, and social cues can spot suspicious activity.

To recognize and react to social engineering efforts, active social engineering defense strongly blends offensive and defensive skills. The only way to obtain the indicators needed to confidently characterize communication as hostile is through engaging the opponent. Active defenses come with a lot of risks because engagement might endanger someone’s or an organization’s reputation. Therefore, it is normally best done in collaboration with an individual who specializes in handling these cases.

Employing a multi-layered strategy for defense, organizations that use ASED reduce the likelihood of these breaches. ASED uses a mix of regulations, education, and technology to lessen the threat posed by social engineering attacks. This kind of security is also known as social identity management or human element security.

Working:

• Detection: Finding an anomaly that could be a sign of a social engineering attack is the first step. Incoming requests and header files are analyzed, processed, and then classified as malicious or not. For instance, the system would automatically flag an inbound request as suspicious and notify the cyber security team, so they can take the necessary action if it tries to download a file from an untrusted location or tries to submit login credentials to a system with a known vulnerability.
• Responding: The defensive program then employs various approaches suitably based on the type of threat to respond to the attacker by impersonating them in order to satisfy their requirements.
• Separation: The system then tries to distinguish the attacker from the identity of a legitimate user to whom he claimed to have gained access to the system after extracting the essential information and unmasking it. It is possible to separate attacker profiles from genuine ones in a number of ways, such as by requiring the attacker to comply with policy-required actions in order to gather the necessary information to be classified as a legitimate user.

Steps of an effective ASED program:

1. The first step in establishing a successful ASED program is identifying the types of social engineering attacks that are most likely to target your organization and developing policies to discourage these practices. This could include requiring regular security training and screening for all employees. Employees should be trained on the company’s security policies and how to protect themselves from social engineering attacks.
2. Many organizations go above and beyond to protect sensitive internal systems, such as installing firewalls and using secure login credentials for internal applications. The development of a robust incident response plan is an important component of an ASED program. This plan should include specifics on how to respond to a social engineering attack, as well as how to isolate and quarantine affected systems. The plan should also specify what actions will be taken if an employee fails to follow established security procedures or acts suspiciously.
3. Advanced technologies such as threat intelligence analysis and advanced analytics tools that can detect abnormal behaviors and identify suspicious network activity should also be included in effective ASED programs. These tools can assist in automating the process of monitoring user behavior and providing additional insight that can be used to identify malicious actors and reduce the time required to identify and mitigate an attack.
4. To ensure that all aspects of your security infrastructure are adequately protected, ASED should be part of a larger security strategy that also includes threat prevention and endpoint security.

Advantages:

1. Detecting threats faster than traditional methods (e.g., static and dynamic analysis). This is critical because it allows the security team to detect a malicious attempt quickly and respond with appropriate countermeasures to reduce the threat impact.
2. It gives more control over network security because it monitors all network activity in real-time and responds to detected attacks automatically.
3. Uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect and analyze malicious behavior across the network to protect against zero-day attacks that evade existing signature-based defenses.
4. Provides a scalable, flexible solution that can be easily deployed across multiple sites, allowing organizations to protect their entire network infrastructure with a single security solution.
5. Supports integration with third-party security solutions, which can improve its capabilities by adding additional layers of defense, such as antivirus and intrusion prevention systems.

Challenges:

There are various challenges in security against Social Engineering Attacks:

• One of the most difficult challenges is distinguishing social engineering attacks from normal user behavior without compromising user experience or performance, because as attacks evolve, even bots may produce a Natural Human Sounding response.
• Second, it takes a significant amount of effort and expertise to build a system that can handle multiple types of attacks without compromising overall performance, because the more sophisticated the attacks, the more layers of defense are required.
• Finally, maintaining and constantly updating the system’s security mechanism is a challenge, as every time a new type of attack is introduced, the system must be updated to respond to the new threat.