What Are Tailgating Attacks

Every week that passes brings with it a major Hacking story in the media.

This week, McAfee Blog is talking about “What Are Tailgating Attacks and How to Protect Yourself From Them”.

While awareness is key, it seems to do little good on the rate of recurrence of cyber crimes.

Whether you’re spending time on the web or working in the office, you want peace of mind knowing that you are in a safe environment. While most of us know to take precautions when online — protecting ourselves from things like phishing attacks and other cyber threats — we should also attend to our physical security.

One concern is tailgating — a social engineering attack where someone gets physical access to a business to take confidential information or do other harm.

Here are some ways to protect yourself from tailgating attacks, such as an unauthorized person following you into a restricted area while on the job.

What is a tailgating attack?

Tailgating is a type of social engineering attack where an unauthorized person gains physical access to an off-limits location — perhaps a password-protected area — where they might steal sensitive information, damage property, compromise user credentials or even install malware on computers.

“Piggybacking” is closely related to tailgating, but it involves consent from the duped employee. So, while a worker might be unaware that someone has tailgated them into a restricted area with piggybacking, the hacker might convince a worker to provide access because they are posing as, say, a delivery driver.

Practically, I am beginning to believe that more attention is having the negative effect.

Data breeches and Cyber Security has become white noise, and as a result we have all become complacent.

If large enterprises and even countries are venerable, how can individual defend against this threat.

Imagine if we were this lax towards currency or even organizational assets.

In my understanding one of the reasons why IT Security is facing this challenge, is fundamentally due to lack of management serious commitment. We say we are serious but we don’t act it.

Due to recent events, I do think things are changing and we are heading towards a zero-tolerance and zero-comprise.

It is do able, it is not costly and it should be part of the enterprise architecture and DNA from day one.

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