The more one uses and shares on social media, the more information is publicly available for cyber attackers to use to exploit users’ personal and professional information.

It is hard for people to realize that every single thing shared on any social media platform is available for friends and foes alike to access and use. It is the detrimental use by criminals that is the concern and subject of this post.

A recent blog post by ISACA author Allen Ari Dziwa provides a great example of how seemingly innocuous posts on social media can turn into a CEO’s nightmare. In the example, the CEO receives an email from his “wife” about a recent golf trip. Since the CEO sees it is from his “wife,” a familiar source of emails, his guard is down, and he doesn’t check to see if it is a malicious phishing email. The result: he clicks on the link provided in the spoofed email and introduces malicious malware into his company’s network.

Social engineering is not a difficult thing to accomplish in just a few short minutes. It is scary to see how easy it is to spoof someone and by using familiarity, trick someone else into believing it is the person who is being spoofed.

Be wary of the information shared on social media and how it can be used by criminals to conduct social engineering scams.