Social engineering is a psychological manipulation technique used by attackers to exploit human behavior rather than technical vulnerabilities—targeting trust, curiosity, fear, or urgency to deceive victims into revealing sensitive information or performing unauthorized actions. Phishing represents the most prevalent form, using fraudulent communications (email, SMS, voice, QR codes) to impersonate legitimate entities. Understanding this threat landscape is critical because no technical defense is complete without addressing the human element—employees remain the primary attack vector in most data breaches. The key insight: social engineering attacks succeed not by breaking code, but by manipulating the decision-making process under psychological pressure, making awareness and verification protocols your strongest defense.