Social Engineering Prevention: What Still Works (and What Doesn’t)

How Social Engineering Is Evolving in 2025

Social engineering has always been a moving target. In 2025, it’s no longer just about deceptive emails or fake tech support calls. Attackers are layering psychological tactics with emerging technologies, using AI-generated spear phishing, deepfake video impersonations, and even QR code lures to bypass traditional defenses. These new techniques are fundamentally changing how attackers exploit trust, identity, and urgency.

While the fundamentals of social engineering prevention still matter, threat actors have adapted faster than many security teams. While foundational awareness training remains valuable, basic phishing simulations and static modules on their own no longer keep up with the sophistication of modern social engineering methods. What's needed now is a strategy that evolves with the threat, one that incorporates adaptive awareness, real-time detection, and behavior-based defenses.

Building this level of adaptability often requires combining advisory insights, advanced detection capabilities, and focused awareness efforts. At RedLegg, we’ve seen that organizations succeed when they approach social engineering prevention as an evolving program rather than a compliance exercise.

In this article, we’ll break down what still works in defending against social engineering scams, what no longer does, and what forward-leaning security leaders are doing in 2025 to stay ahead.

What’s Still Working in Social Engineering Prevention

Certain core defenses, built on behavioral insights and supported by technical layers, continue to hold value even as threat tactics evolve. The key isn’t just to train users but to train them in ways that reflect how people actually think and behave when under pressure.

Behavior-Based Awareness Training

Security awareness that accounts for cognitive bias and emotional manipulation still plays a critical role in how to avoid social engineering. Organizations are shifting away from generic presentations and toward targeted, habit-forming security education grounded in behavioral science. This includes designing campaigns that build psychological resilience, so users are not just aware but prepared to recognize and interrupt manipulation attempts.

Tiered Awareness for High-Risk Users

Often, the most vulnerable targets are executives, finance staff, and IT administrators, who can cause the most damage if compromised. A one-size-fits-all program can’t cut it. From a security awareness perspective, RedLegg advises a risk-based model where social engineering awareness is tiered: high-risk users receive deeper, scenario-driven training and more frequent touchpoints. However, in practice, attackers don’t always target based on the title. They prioritize access. That often means targeting mid-level IT personnel with elevated privileges, who may not be perceived as high-risk internally but present a more direct path to critical systems.

Email Protections + User Reporting Workflows

Secure email gateways and sandboxing solutions continue to play a foundational role, especially when paired with user-driven reporting mechanisms. When RedLegg conducts phishing vs. social engineering simulations, the most effective programs are those where users are not just passive learners but active defenders, flagging suspicious emails that feed back into detection workflows.

Multi-Layered Detection and Identity Verification

Defenses don’t stop at the inbox. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) help detect and respond to suspicious activity and prevent lateral movement, while multi-factor authentication (MFA) validates user legitimacy across access points. Establishing a phishing response process allows security teams to quickly identify and contain compromised credentials or lateral movement attempts that stem from social engineering methods. Organizations can reference approaches like this phishing response framework when designing their own capabilities.

These capabilities, when combined, still provide a strong foundation, but only when they’re integrated into a dynamic program that evolves with both threat behavior and internal risk exposure.

What No Longer Cuts It in 2025

Outdated tactics leave critical blind spots that attackers can exploit. The threats of 2025 demand more than surface-level defenses and routine checkbox activities.

Static Phishing Simulations

Simulated phishing emails that never evolve beyond basic misspellings and obvious deceptions no longer reflect the real threat environment. Leveraging AI, today’s social engineering scams use current events, company-specific language, and personalized details to increase credibility and bypass traditional defenses. If simulations don’t replicate that realism, they don’t prepare users. Modern social engineering campaigns should mimic real-world threats and measure user behavior, not just click rates, to provide meaningful insight into organizational risk.

Uniform Awareness Training

Providing the same training video to every department, every year, leads to disengagement and false confidence. It’s especially ineffective when dealing with varied user roles and threat profiles. Organizations need awareness strategies that adapt to role, access level, and threat exposure. RedLegg recommends tailoring advisory efforts and awareness planning to these factors to strengthen overall resilience.

Over-Reliance on Spam Filters

Email filters play an important role, but they’re not bulletproof. Attackers are increasingly bypassing these controls through low-volume campaigns or by embedding payloads in QR codes, image files, and PDFs disguised as invoices. Fake DocuSign messages are also being used to trick users into granting access or sharing credentials. Without layered detection or user context, over-reliance on filtering leaves room for compromise.

Ignoring Non-Email Channels

While email remains the most common vector, modern attacks extend across SMS, collaboration tools, and even voice. Organizations should assess their exposure across different communication methods and consider incorporating cross-channel simulations to build readiness for threats that don’t originate in the inbox alone. This multi-channel awareness strengthens both user response and detection capabilities across the enterprise.

Gaps in Multi-Channel Simulation

If your organization hasn’t tested how users respond to a fake CEO message on Teams or a QR code on a printed flyer, you’re missing parts of the attack surface. When RedLegg performs a social engineering engagement, we test across multiple formats with a focus on identifying real user behavior patterns, not just assumed ones.

Outdated tools and assumptions can be ineffective and may even create a false sense of control. Recognizing these gaps is the first step toward a more proactive defense model.

Emerging Threats That Demand Modern Defenses

The types of social engineering attacks seen in 2025 reflect a new level of tactical sophistication. Where attackers once relied on urgency and creative formatting, they now harness generative AI, publicly available data, and new communication vectors to manipulate trust at scale. To counter these threats, defenses must evolve just as quickly and, in some cases, more creatively.

Deepfake Impersonation of Executives

A convincing deepfake can replicate a voice or face in a way that makes fraudulent requests appear legitimate. Imagine a finance manager receiving a short video from the “CFO” requesting an urgent transfer before a quarterly report. Without strong identity verification protocols and internal training, such tactics can be highly effective. Organizations should consider incorporating deepfake scenarios into tabletop exercises to help teams recognize and challenge anomalies before damage occurs.

AI-Generated Spear Phishing

Modern phishing emails are being written and rewritten by AI models that adapt to tone, context, and the role of the recipient. These emails reference real internal projects or organizational jargon, making them far harder to spot. Targeted awareness programs should include simulations of these tactics, and organizations can use Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) to monitor for post-compromise credential use.

QR Code Phishing

Attackers are embedding malicious payloads into QR codes posted on flyers, conference swag, and even fake parking tickets. Once scanned, these codes redirect to credential harvesters or malware sites. Organizations need user training that highlights this emerging tactic, as well as technical controls that detect suspicious redirects. We must have express written permission to test any personal device in a simulation; however, attackers are not bound by the same rules of engagement.

Hybrid Attacks Across Channels

Attackers often blend formats: an email sets up the pretext, a text message delivers urgency, and a file share link completes the payload delivery. These hybrid approaches exploit fragmented detection and inconsistent user training across tools. Organizations should regularly test and evaluate how users and systems respond across channels to uncover blind spots and improve coordination between detection and response efforts.

Evolving threats are increasingly personalized, automated, and difficult to detect using traditional defenses. Security programs must adapt to these shifts by implementing modern social engineering prevention strategies that incorporate both behavioral and technical elements.

Building an Active Social Engineering Defense Program

Passive defenses no longer cut it. Security teams should consider proactive social engineering defense strategies that address both behavioral and technical dimensions of risk. That means replicating real-world attacks, targeting the right users with the right training, and integrating threat detection into every layer of operations.

Realistic, Multi-Channel Simulations

Effective simulations should reflect the complexity of real-world attacks. In a perfect world, campaigns would span email, SMS, messaging apps, and even QR code placements. However, social engineering simulations are bound by strict rules of engagement. RedLegg can only test devices that are owned by the organization and explicitly scoped for assessment. Personal devices, used to scan QR codes or receive texts, are off-limits without written permission.

High-Risk User Monitoring and Advisory

Identifying users who consistently fall for simulated attacks or access sensitive systems is critical. While RedLegg’s penetration tests cast a wide net to maximize opportunity and realism, we help organizations interpret results to identify behavioral patterns and potential risk concentrations. Organizations should provide high-risk users with tailored guidance, enhanced monitoring, and additional layers of protection to reduce exposure. This proactive model reduces the likelihood of compromise before it occurs.

Integrated Technical Controls

Behavioral defenses are only part of the equation. Technical safeguards like real-time email threat detection, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) remain essential across access points. But even with these in place, phishing threats can still slip through.

For example, if an employee reports a suspicious invoice email that bypassed filters, investigating and removing similar messages can take hours without a defined process. A phishing response workflow streamlines this, automatically analyzing and removing malicious emails from all inboxes within minutes.

To address this, RedLegg recommends implementing a dedicated phishing response process that combines human analysis with automated remediation. This approach helps teams investigate reported emails, confirm threats, and remove malicious messages from all affected inboxes, reducing dwell time and easing the burden on internal staff.

An active defense doesn’t rely on hope or assumptions. It’s built on realistic testing, continuous learning, and tight alignment between human and machine defenses. That’s what we help our clients develop—day in, day out.

Don’t Let Outdated Strategies Create Exposure in 2025

Social engineering tactics have evolved, but many defensive strategies haven’t kept pace. Static training, one-dimensional phishing tests, and over-reliance on filters leave critical gaps, especially when attackers are using deepfakes, AI, and multi-channel tactics to bypass trust.

At RedLegg, we help organizations assess where traditional approaches may fall short and where new methods can strengthen resilience. Our approach to social engineering prevention blends behavior-driven awareness, technical defense, and continuous testing, so you're not just compliant, you're resilient. From Advisory Services to MDR and targeted assessments, we build programs that actively defend against modern threats.

If you're rethinking your strategy in 2025, and you should be, now’s the time to act. Let’s build a program that fits your threat reality.

Talk to a RedLegg expert to evaluate your current social engineering defense and develop a more proactive and adaptive approach.