[{"_1":2,"_3":-5,"_4":-5},"loaderData",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"actionData","errors","root",{"_28":-5,"_38":-5,"_39":40,"_41":42,"_43":44,"_45":46,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":52,"_53":54,"_55":56,"_57":58},"routes/_store+/_readers+/email_author.$slug/route",{"_9":10,"_11":-5},"book",{"_12":13,"_14":15,"_16":17,"_18":19,"_20":21,"_22":23},"currentUser","id","Z2lkOi8vbGVhbnB1Yi9TdG9yZTo6Qm9va1Byb2R1Y3QvODIyODU","title","Social Engineering Attack and Defense","state","published","contactAuthorMethod","email","aboutText","

Every year, organizations pour billions into firewalls, endpoint detection, and zero-trust architectures, and every year attackers walk right past all of it by asking a receptionist to hold a door or sending an email that simply looks like it came from the CEO. Social Engineering Attack & Defense is the practical, in-depth guide to the one domain of cybersecurity where technology alone will never be enough: the human being at the keyboard.

Written for security professionals, IT managers, red teamers, awareness trainers, and curious technologists, this book walks through the psychology attackers exploit, from authority bias and manufactured urgency to reciprocity and social proof, and the techniques they actually use in the field: phishing, spear phishing, business email compromise, vishing, physical pretexting, and the AI-powered deepfakes reshaping the threat landscape. You'll go deep on reconnaissance and target selection, dissect real BEC case studies step by step, and learn how criminal groups have used a single phone call to compromise household-name companies.

But this is not just an attacker's playbook. Equal weight is given to building the defense: designing a human risk management program that actually changes behavior, running red team and purple team engagements that test your organization the way a real adversary would, layering technical controls that reinforce the human element, and executing incident response when, despite every precaution, an attack succeeds.

Every chapter blends real-world case studies (the 2020 Twitter compromise, the Target HVAC breach, a $25 million deepfake wire fraud) with reproducible technical examples, sample policies, and reference frameworks. No prior security background is required beyond general familiarity with email and corporate IT. You'll close the book not just informed, but equipped to test, train, and defend the human firewall in your own organization.

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Kick off your book project, get started with GhostAI, get better at marketing, or spend the day doing all three! Free live workshops on Zoom. Saturday, June 27, 2026.

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