What Is Tailgating?

In the world of highly technical cyberattacks, tailgating attacks are surprisingly low-tech. Tailgating––also known as piggybacking––involves an unauthorized person physically following an authorized person into a restricted area within a building. With this kind of attack, hackers will often pretend as though they’ve forgotten their ID card to access a certain building or room and will simply follow in behind when an authorized user opens the door. Tailgating might also include a hacker using a computer that the previous user failed to log off of properly. In either case, once the access is acquired, the hacker is able to introduce malware into the organization’s network.