According to a new survey, about half of the large businesses suffered from socially engineered attacks as many as 25 times in the last two years.

The survey conducted by Dimensional Research showed that 48% of large businesses experienced 25 successful socially engineered attacks in eth period costing the thousands of dollars in cleanup costs.

The survey was sponsored by Check Point Software Technologies and was conducted on 850 IT and security professionals in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. About 86 per cent of the respondents agreed that these attacks are a growing threat to businesses.

According to those surveyed, the main aim of the attackers includes stealing financial information, followed by extracting trade secrets, or revenge. The main tool used in such attack is the phishing email and social networking profile of employees with contact details.

Socially engineered attacks normally bypasses sophisticated technology defenses by targeting people through manipulation. By targeting the employees with much authority and access the attackers are able to exploit sensitive information.

The survey also pointed out that one-third of businesses doesn't train employees to avoid social engineering attacks even as about half of them said that they are planning to start training.

"At the end of the day, people are a critical part of the security process as they can be misled by criminals and make mistakes that lead to malware infections or unintentional data loss," said Oded Gonda, vice president of security products at Check Point, in a statement.