
He gained notoriety as a highly skilled hacker who penetrated some of the most resilient computer systems ever developed. Sjouwerman is the author of four books, with his latest being “Cyberheist: The Biggest Financial Threat Facing American Mitnick, ‘the World’s Most Famous Hacker’, is an internationally recognized computer security expert with extensive experience in exposing the vulnerabilities of complex operating systems and telecom devices.

KnowBe4 services over 1,200 organizations in a variety of industries, including highly-regulated fields such as healthcare, finance, energy, government and insurance and is experiencing explosive yearly growth of 300%. Realizing that the human element of security was being seriously neglected, Sjouwerman decided to help organizations manage the problem of cybercrime social engineering tactics through new school security awareness training. 500 company Sunbelt Software, a multiple award-winning anti-malware software company that was acquired in 2010. A data security expert with more than 30 years in the IT industry, Sjouwerman was the co-founder of Inc. Stu Sjouwerman and Kevin Sjouwerman (pronounced “shower-man”) is the founder and CEO of KnowBe4, LLC, which hosts the world’s most popular integrated Security Awareness Training and Simulated Phishing platform. To uncover some of the most common social engineering attacks being used against modern enterprises and get tips on how to avoid them, we asked a panel of data security experts and business leaders to answer the following question: "What are the common social engineering attacks made on companies, and how can they be prevented?" We wanted to educate companies, employees, and end users on how to better recognize social engineering efforts and prevent these attacks from succeeding.

Read more about social engineering attacks in our article on social engineering. Because social engineering involves a human element, preventing these attacks can be tricky for enterprises. Commonly, social engineering involves email or other communication that invokes urgency, fear, or similar emotions in the victim, leading the victim to promptly reveal sensitive information, click a malicious link, or open a malicious file. Social engineering attacks typically involve some form of psychological manipulation, fooling otherwise unsuspecting users or employees into handing over confidential or sensitive data.

With hackers devising ever-more clever methods for fooling employees and individuals into handing over valuable company data, enterprises must use due diligence in an effort to stay two steps ahead of cyber criminals. Social engineering attacks are not only becoming more common against enterprises and SMBs, but they're also increasingly sophisticated.
