Social engineering techniques
Lesson details
Learning outcome
I can describe social engineering and explain the techniques used in social engineering.
Key learning points
- Social engineering is a cybercrime that manipulates people into revealing confidential information.
- Social engineering targets human psychology rather than exploiting technical systems.
- There are many different social engineering techniques such as blagging, phishing and pharming.
Keywords
Social engineering - techniques used to trick users into giving away personal information by manipulating their behaviour or emotions
Cybercriminal - a person who uses computers, networks or digital devices to commit illegal activities online
Human error - a mistake made by people that accidentally leads to security breaches, data leaks, or other cyber incidents
Common misconception
Social engineering only involves technical hacking or complex cyberattacks.
Social engineering mainly targets human psychology, not technical vulnerabilities. It's more about exploiting trust and human error than technical skills.
Teacher tip
Use real life scenarios or role playing activities to help students understand how social engineering works. For example, simulate a phishing email or fake phone call and have students identify red flags and discuss what they would do.
Licence
Lesson video
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Prior knowledge starter quiz
6 Questions
Q1.What is a common impact of cybercrime on individuals and businesses?
Q2.How can cyberattacks impact public safety?
Q3.What motivates some hackers to carry out cybercrime?
Q4.What is the term for illegal activities involving computers or networks?
Q5.Who uses their computer skills to access systems or networks, sometimes to fix problems and sometimes to cause harm?
Q6.Match the impacts to their descriptions:
loss of money due to cybercrime
fear and lack of confidence in digital systems
disruption of essential services
Assessment exit quiz
6 Questions
Q1.What does social engineering mainly target?
Q2.Why is it important to recognise social engineering techniques?
Q3.Match the techniques to their descriptions:
pretending to be someone else to gain information
sending fake emails or messages
redirecting users to fake websites
manipulating people to reveal confidential information
Q4.What is the term for watching someone enter their PIN or password to gain unauthorised access?
Q5.What is a name generator attack?
Q6.Why is social engineering effective?
To help you plan your 11 computer science lesson on: Social engineering techniques, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your 11 computer science lesson on: Social engineering techniques, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 4 computer science lessons from the Cyber threats and security unit, dive into the full secondary computer science curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.