Human Factors of Social Engineering Attacks (SEAs) in Hybrid Cloud Environment: Threats and Risks

Conventional patterns of the ways information systems run are rapidly evolving. Cloud computing undisputedly has influenced profoundly in this direction by providing many benefits such as accessibility and availability of resources to organisations. But the economical advantage and the cost impacts are far more attractive to organisations than anything else when it comes to cloud computing. This convenient and attractiveness comes with new phases of security and risk challenges for both cloud providers and clients which requires investment for managing and mitigating them. The challenges get more complicated as the service itself passes geographical and national boundaries which create a completely new paradigm for security, risk, privacy, and more importantly cost implications. Social Engineering Attacks (SEAs) are example of those risks that are very attractive way for attackers for accessing classified data. There are certain constraints for employees when they use LAN. These limitations reduced greatly by the introduction of Cloud and off-site services. This allows attackers to use any compromised passwords from any web-connected device. This paper discusses main issues in migrating to a cloud environment by organisations regarding the human factors of SEAs threats and risks related concepts. The approach provides a set of recommendations for appropriate control actions to mitigate related risks.