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Social Engineering

We've curated 35 cybersecurity statistics about Social engineering to help you understand how attackers manipulate human psychology to gain sensitive information and access in 2025. These insights reveal the tactics used and the importance of awareness in combating these threats.

Showing 1-20 of 35 results

72% of Chief Information Security Officers report a significant increase in attacks, led primarily by AI-powered social engineering.

Optro5/27/2026
AI-Powered Attacks

Human error (employees tricked into providing credentials) was cited in nearly 43% of identity incidents.

Sophos5/27/2026
Human ErrorIdentity Attack

60% of digital trust professionals cited social engineering as an AI risk.

ISACA5/27/2026
AI AI Risk

In the last six months, calendar invite phishing increased by 49%.

KnowBe45/27/2026
PhishingCollaboration Tools

Internal team impersonation was present in 30% of phishing attacks by threat actors in Q1 2026.

KnowBe45/27/2026
Insider ImpersonationPhishing

Social engineering drove 88% of material losses in the first half of 2025 in Resilience's healthcare portfolio, making human error the industry's single most consequential vulnerability.

Resilience5/27/2026
HealthcareHuman Error

48% of enterprises' cyberattacks involve phishing or social engineering.

Crogl5/27/2026
Phishing

86% of CISOs fear agentic AI will increase the sophistication of social engineering attacks.

Splunk5/27/2026
Agentic AI

28% of SMB respondents say AI is creating hyper-personalized social engineering attacks.

VikingCloud5/27/2026
SMBsAI

Novel social engineering phishing techniques increased from 32% to 38% year-over-year.

Darktrace5/27/2026
Phishing

51% of organizations have faced sophisticated, personalized phishing emails powered by deepfake technology.

Ivanti2/14/2026
PhishingDeepfake

77% of organizations have been targeted by deepfake attacks.

Ivanti2/14/2026
Deepfake

In Q4 2025, callback phishing increased from 3% to 18% of all phishing incidents, a 500% spike.

VIPRE Security Group2/9/2026
PhishingCallback Phishing

In 2025, 'ClickFix' social engineering techniques were used in 1% of phishing attacks.

Barracuda1/13/2026
PhishingPhishing Techniques

63% of retailers plan to invest significantly in generative AI for social engineering attacks.

LevelBlue11/16/2025
RetailGen AI

65% of organizations expressed serious concern about IT help desk bypass and social engineering attacks as a top threat.

RSA11/15/2025
IT help desk bypassSocial engineering

Nearly a third of leaders at financial services firms admit they are not fully confident employees could recognize an AI-driven phishing or social engineering threat.

Omega Systems10/15/2025
Financial services AI-driven attack

64% of surveyed enterprises confirmed social engineering attacks via encrypted or informal channels in the past 12 months.

Dune9/4/2025
EnterprisesSocial engineering

38% of organizations admit to being underprepared for AI-driven social engineering threats such as automated attacks, deepfake-based videos, and voice scams.

LevelBlue8/27/2025
AISocial engineering

AI-enhanced phishing and social engineering are the most concerning tactics (27%) for insider threats.

Exabeam8/21/2025
Insider threatAI