Social Engineering and Security: From Human Vulnerabilities to Malicious Threats

The digitization of all processes and the expansion of IoT devices have fostered the emergence of a new form of crime: cybercrime. This term covers a range of malicious acts, the majority of which are now carried out using social engineering strategies-a phenomenon that combines the exploitation of both «human» vulnerabilities and digital tools. The maliciousness of such attacks lies in the fact that they turn users into facilitators of cyber-attacks, making them the «weak link» in cybersecurity. These attacks have increased in both intensity and frequency, causing significant emotional and financial damage to public institutions, businesses of all sizes, and individuals. This research provides an overview of social engineering attacks, existing detection techniques, and the limited effectiveness of current countermeasures, whether due to technological or human factors. Even a robust security system can be easily bypassed by a simple social engineering attack. As current deployment policies prove insufficient, it is necessary to focus on upstream steps: learning how to anticipate attacks, identifying weak signals and outliers, detecting threats early, and reacting quickly to cybercrime. These are priority issues that require a prevention-focused and cooperative approach.