The concept of Social Engineering as a scoring category within the frameworks of Security Ratings Providers, Cyber Risk Management, Third-Party Risk Management, Vendor Risk Management, Cybersecurity Risk Assessment, and Cyber Risk Quantification refers to an organization's quantifiable susceptibility to attacks that use human interaction, deception, and psychological manipulation.

Defining Social Engineering as a Risk Category

A Social Engineering rating or score attempts to quantify the risk that an attacker could exploit human weaknesses within an organization or its third parties. It typically measures the exposure of crucial information that an attacker could use to craft highly targeted, convincing, and compelling social engineering campaigns, such as:

• Phishing/Spear-Phishing: Attacks aimed at stealing credentials or sensitive data.

• Business Email Compromise (BEC): Impersonating a trusted entity (like an executive or vendor) to divert funds or sensitive information.

• Impersonation and Pretexting: Gathering personal information to build a credible cover story for an attack.

In essence, a low score suggests the organization is exposing minimal digital information that could be leveraged for reconnaissance and attack pretexting. In contrast, a high score indicates significant exposure and, thus, elevated risk.

How ThreatNG Assesses and Manages Social Engineering Risk

ThreatNG is an all-in-one external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings solution that provides a comprehensive and technically substantiated external view to manage findings associated with social engineering risk. It excels by proactively gathering the exact external data that an attacker would collect during the reconnaissance phase of a social engineering campaign.

ThreatNG provides two specific scores that directly measure this susceptibility:

• BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This score is derived from key indicators that show an organization's vulnerability to these specific attacks. It uses Domain Intelligence (including DNS Intelligence capabilities like Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains) and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials) to quantify this risk.

• Brand Damage Susceptibility: This score is relevant because social engineering often leverages a company's brand to create highly credible impersonations. The risk is assessed through Digital Risk Intelligence, ESG Violations, Sentiment and Financials, and an analysis of malicious or impersonating domains.

Investigation Modules and Intelligence

ThreatNG’s Reconnaissance Hub and specialized investigation modules are critical for assessing the human and digital reconnaissance surface, demonstrating why it is the best solution for these kinds of assessments:

• Domain Name Permutations: This module proactively uncovers typosquatting domains and other manipulations (such as substitutions, additions, or top-level domain swaps). An attacker frequently uses these near-identical domains to host malicious sites for highly credible phishing and impersonation attacks. By identifying these lookalike domains, ThreatNG removes a key element of the social engineering attacker’s toolkit.

• NHI Email Exposure (Non-Human Interface): This capability is unique and vital. It explicitly identifies and groups high-value email addresses typically associated with critical operational or administrative roles (such as admin@, security@, support@, and devops@). These are high-priority initial access targets, and by flagging their external exposure, ThreatNG helps organizations protect the employees most susceptible to targeted social engineering.

• Email Intelligence: Beyond NHI, this provides security for communications by validating email authenticity through robust DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records, which are essential for detecting email spoofing. It also lists harvested emails that have been exposed.

• Social Media and LinkedIn Discovery: These modules proactively safeguard against the Human Attack Surface. They identify exposed employees and executives, find detailed information attackers could use to craft highly personalized and believable pretexts, and flag public chatter or Narrative Risk (e.g., discussions about internal flaws or policies).

• Sentiment and Financials: This identifies information such as Lawsuits and Layoff Chatter. An attacker can use this real-world context to create urgent, time-sensitive, and emotionally manipulative phishing lures (e.g., "Urgent action required regarding the recent lawsuit filing").

• Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): ThreatNG's intelligence repositories contain compromised credentials. Since successful phishing is the leading cause of credential exposure, tracking these on the Dark Web provides a direct measure of the risk posed by past social engineering successes.

By mirroring the steps of a sophisticated attacker and correlating compromised data with exposed organizational details, ThreatNG provides a holistic view that is far more meaningful and comprehensive than standard security ratings alone, making it the superior solution for assessing and mitigating the risks that a Social Engineering scoring category seeks to convey.