Guest Lecture on Social Engineering and Awareness

Students of the bachelor program Digital Business at THI Business School enjoyed an exciting guest lecture last summer semester. Dr. Oliver Gmelch, Professor of Digital Business and IT Management, and Sebastian Dännart, lecturer in the Digital Business program, were able to secure Dr. Andreas Rieb for a guest lecture on "Social Engineering and Awareness" during the course "IT Security Management". Rieb is Compliance Awareness & Culture Change Lead at SAP Fioneer and once did his PhD on gamification of awareness approaches. For this, he developed a cyberwar game for training IT professionals.

During the presentation, Dr. Rieb illustrated how cybercriminals use manipulative rhetoric and what companies can do about it. The topic of social engineering was also explained in very clear examples and, in particular, the avoidance of resulting vulnerabilities in the corporate context was addressed. For the students, the practical examples were quite catchy, and they were able to take away many lessons for their later professional life - in particular, how awareness campaigns can maintain the awareness of such threats among employees and how behavioural changes can be achieved as a result.

Lectures like this offer students important practical relevance and are an essential part of studying at THI Business School.