Twenty-one zeroes. That’s how many zeroes sit at the end of 175 zettabytes. And that’s how much data humanity will have generated by 2025 at a compound annual growth rate of 61%. Unfortunately, it is also the human factor that’s become the weakest security link with social engineering attacks becoming the most virulent and prevalent. The Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report found that 82% of breaches involved the human factor, KnowBe4 believes that between 70-90% of breaches were due to social engineering, and Barracuda research found that the average company is hit by more than 700 social engineering attacks annually.

And these are just the tip of the cliché. The challenge is to find an intelligent route through the rising tides of social threats to protect both the organisation and the individual, especially as the tactics used by cybercriminals continue to evolve and improve. This is being complicated even further by the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation in cybercrime – as much as these technologies enhance and empower the organisation’s security stance, they too can be used by cybercriminals to improve their own tactics and methodologies.