Josh Bartolomie — VP, Global Head of Threat Intelligence at Doppel
Jul 22, 2026
For a long time, the cybersecurity industry has framed social engineering as a psychological problem. We treat it as a battle of wits between a charismatic con artist and an unsuspecting employee. The prevailing wisdom says that if we just train our people to better identify scams or tear down malicious infrastructure slightly faster, we can stay ahead of scammers.
But looking at the threat landscape from a purely threat-intelligence perspective tells us something entirely different: Modern social engineering is more than a psychological game. It's a highly optimized, industrialized deception economy.
Attackers run campaigns like hyper-efficient businesses. They have Customer Acquisition Costs, operational budgets, and strict Return on Investment (ROI) targets.
