Securing the service desk: Why social engineering attacks keep succeeding

This report examines how attackers target outsourced and internal service desks using social engineering (reconnaissance, impersonation, caller ID/SIM swap, MFA bypass) to obtain credentials and escalate access—citing Scattered Spider, Silent Ransom Group, and recent incidents against retailers and Carnival—and recommends verification controls, stricter MFA reset policies, monitoring of help-desk activity, privilege limitations, and red-team testing; it concludes with promotion of Specops Secure Service Desk as a mitigation.