Security engineering is the field of engineering dealing with the security and integrity of real-world systems.
Security systems engineering has existed as an informal field for centuries, in the fields of locksmithing and security printing.
Technological advances, principally in the field of computers, have now allowed the creation of far more complex systems than before, with new and complex security problems. Because modern systems cut across many areas of human endeavor, security engineers not only need consider the mathematical and physical properties of systems; they also need to consider attacks on the people who use and form parts of those systems using social engineering attacks. Secure systems have to resist not only technical attacks, but also coercion, fraud, and deception by confidence tricksters.
A social engineer will commonly use the telephone or Internet to trick people into revealing sensitive information or getting them to do something that is against typical policies.
By this method, social engineers exploit the natural tendency of a person to trust his or her word, rather than exploiting computersecurity holes.
A contemporary example of a social engineering attack is the use of e-mail attachments that contain malicious payloads (that, for instance, use the victim's machine to send massive quantities of spam).
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