Effective Mitigation Strategies for Social Engineering Attacks in Mobile Money Services: A Case Study in Kenya

This background paper explores the effectiveness of mitigation strategies for social engineering attacks in Mobile Money (MM) services. Social Engineering Attacks (SEA) exploit human psychology, making them difficult to prevent with technical safeguards. Although MM has brought the poor into the financial mainstream, the rapid adoption of this technology poses security risks to users, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where SEA are common. The study reviews literature on SEA and identifies vishing, smishing, and phishing as the most common types of attacks. The research question focuses on assessing mitigation strategies for SEA in MM services. The study aims to provide insights for financial institutions and Mobile Money Operators (MMO) to develop effective strategies to prevent fraud. It also contributes to the body of knowledge on MM fraud and helps improve the security and reliability of MM systems.