Top execs biggest social engineering risk

COMMUNICASIA, SINGAPORE--High-level executives are one of the biggest social engineering risks for organizations, according to a security expert.

Senior executives often demand for exceptions to be made to security rules and policies for their convenience at the expense of security, Jayson Street, CIO and managing partner of Strategem 1 Solutions, said Thursday at the network security conference track. This practice makes it easy for cybercriminals to successfully gain access to corporate networks by impersonating as management personnel.

Top executives are also ideal targets given their systems privilege and access rights, he pointed out. "[Hackers are] not going after the bank teller, [they are] going after the bank president, because the tellers have USB drive rights deactivated, they have controls on where they can go on Web sites."

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