Cybersecurity vulnerabilities rise as social engineering and unmanaged assets bypass defenses

Recent cybersecurity trends highlight a growing gap between advanced technical defenses and human or systemic vulnerabilities. A data breach at asset management giant Apollo Global Management demonstrated that even sophisticated security architectures can be bypassed through low-tech social engineering. Hackers utilized vishing (voice phishing) and deceptive websites to impersonate executives or technical support, tricking employees into revealing credentials or approving multi-factor authentication (MFA) requests.

Complementing this, a global study by EY reveals that approximately 36% of corporate assets fall into a ‘vulnerability zone’—areas where visibility and security controls are insufficient. These blind spots are particularly prevalent in operational technology (57%), third-party ecosystems (49%), and AI systems (47%). As attackers increasingly use AI to automate the discovery of these forgotten or unmanaged assets, experts suggest that organizations must shift from a focus on rapid incident recovery to a model of continuous visibility and integrated resilience that includes human training and hardware-based authentication.