October is Cyber Security Awareness Month. Social Engineering is a security threat in the form of cons and scams. Here are several: (1) when an attacker uses fabricated correspondence or a malicious hyperlink to bait victims into divulging personal information; (2) pretexting occurs when an attacker impersonates a trusted entity in order to gather sensitive information; (3) baiting occurs when an attacker leaves malware-infected devices (e.g.. Flash drives, CDs) in hopes that a victim uses the device on their computer; and (4) tailgating occurs when an attacker follows someone with authorization into a controlled access area.

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