Webinar Description
Key Takeaways
- Examines how attackers construct pretexts using organizational hierarchies and vendor relationships to enable phishing, vishing and smishing attacks
- Covers psychological manipulation techniques including urgency, authority, familiarity and fatigue
- Addresses organizational risks such as wire fraud, credential theft, ransomware and data compromise
- Designed for cybersecurity professionals, CISOs, IT managers and security awareness officers
- Participants earn 1 CPE credit
About the Event
Anatomy of a Pretext is a 45 minute live webinar hosted by KnowBe4 and led by CISO Advisor Erich Kron. The session focuses on how cyber attackers exploit trust through social engineering by crafting convincing pretexts to manipulate individuals within organizations.
How Pretexting Attacks Work
The webinar dissects the information gathering phase of social engineering attacks, where adversaries research organizational hierarchies and vendor relationships to build believable narratives. These pretexts then enable multi-layered attack vectors across voice phishing (vishing), SMS phishing (smishing) and traditional email phishing campaigns. The session explains why these attacks frequently bypass traditional security measures by targeting human trust rather than technical vulnerabilities.
Organizational Risk and Defense Strategies
Attendees will learn how pretexting attacks lead to wire fraud, credential theft, ransomware infections and data compromise. The webinar provides practical strategies for training employees to recognize and respond to sophisticated social engineering attempts, with a focus on building workforce awareness as a defensive layer.
Who Should Attend
This webinar is suited for cybersecurity professionals, IT managers, CISOs, security awareness officers and risk managers responsible for organizational security and employee training. The content applies to organizations of all sizes and industries facing human-centric cybersecurity threats.