Tailgating in Cyber Security: Complete Guide

Imagine a person, impersonating someone you can trust (for example, a delivery personnel or a newly recruited staff member), knocks at your door, and after you open the door, they ask for your phone to make an urgent call, claiming their own phone’s battery is dead. Once they access your secure environment, your phone, without raising any suspicion, they can install malicious software or copy your credentials to steal your money or data, i.e., typically what tailgating attackers in cybersecurity do. 

Such social engineering attacks, i.e., breaking the human firewall by exploiting human kindness and deception, tailgating being one of them, are on the rise. According to Verizon, 68% of data breaches in 2024 involved human error, including social engineering attacks. Moreover, according to Palo Alto Networks, more than one-third of social engineering incidents in 2025 involve non-phishing attacks, such as tailgating. 

However, being unkind is not a solution; kindness is the best gift humans have got, but being aware is how you can fight tailgating. 

Hence, we aim to spread awareness about tailgating, how to identify tailgaters (attackers), and how to prevent these attacks through this comprehensive guide. Let’s begin with it right away to save precious time before another tailgating attack happens. 

What Is a Tailgating Attack

Tailgating’s meaning is a social engineering tactic in cybersecurity. It is a breach of physical security, where an unauthorized person follows a person into a restricted area by exploiting human kindness or protocol lapses, accessing digital systems, sensitive information, IT equipment for installing malicious software, or vandalizing operations. 

Note: Tailgating is often used interchangeably with piggybacking. While both involve allowing unauthorized access to attackers into secure areas, they differ in whether or not the access involves consent/awareness. 

Tailgating is an intruder following you secretly, for example, someone entering your office behind you covertly. On the other hand, piggybacking involves express or implied consent (obtained through manipulation or exploitation of kindness), for example, an attacker pretending to carry boxes and asking you to hold the door. 

The next section shares some examples to help you understand it better. 

Tailgating in cybersecurity examples

Let’s look at some real-life examples of tailgating to understand its meaning. 

• Unauthorized access to a restricted area: Imagine a person approaches you while you are entering your office, claiming to be your colleague and asking you to hold the door open for them. To make you believe that they are a fellow employee, they pretend to have left their ID card at home. They manipulate you using social engineering so that you can help them enter the office building.
• Delivery fraud: With the rise of 10-minute delivery applications, many people order goods, documents, food, or other items every day. Imagine someone wearing the attire resembling your favorite delivery application arrives at your door, and you, with no reason to be suspicious, give them access to your building.
• Impersonation: Suppose someone claims they are a newly recruited IT staff member at your office and needs to access the server rooms urgently to solve technical problems. Without being suspicious and verifying, employees trusting that person allows them access to the restricted area.
• After-hours confusion: After a long day at the office, everyone is in a hurry to catch a relaxing breath at home. Attackers may take advantage of this after-hours ambush, when security may not be so vigilant. They may follow night-shift workers into the office or return to the office pretending to forget something inside.
• Borrowing a device: Suppose someone asks to use your laptop or smartphone, saying their device battery is dead. You give them your device, and they then install harmful software or copy your credentials.

Now that you are familiar with the meaning of tailgating and understand how it may manifest in real life, let’s look at the technicalities of how these attacks happen. 

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How Does Tailgating Work in Cyber Security

Usually, attackers follow three approaches to execute tailgating attacks, as outlined below. 

Session or cookie hijacking

Session hijacking or cookie hijacking involves obtaining a user’s session ID by intercepting network traffic via an XSS attack or by using tools to get the session cookie in the web browser. 

For example, an attacker may steal your user session ID if you connect to your organization’s network without a Virtual Private Network (VPN). 

Social engineering

Social engineering is among the most common tailgating strategies. It uses deception and manipulation to enter a restricted area or network. For example, you hold a door open for someone carrying a heavy load or fall for a phishing email that appears to be from your organization asking you to verify your password for routine IT maintenance. 

Exploiting the logout procedure flaws

More sophisticated tailgating attacks occur when the logout mechanism of a user’s system fails to end their session correctly once they log out and become inactive. Even after logging out and becoming inactive, the user remains active, creating a loophole that attackers can exploit to enter the system. 

These techniques make tailgating attacks tough to detect. However, being watchful of a few warning signs can help you identify these attacks. 

Key Warning Signs in Tailgating Attacks

Looking for the following signs can help you detect tailgating attacks in physical and digital environments. 

Tailgating warning signs in a physical setting

• An individual following an authorized person closely through a restricted area without their own credentials, such as biometric identification, keycard, etc.
• A person does not have the required credentials, such as an ID badge or fumble for an entry card, when reaching a point requiring valid entry credentials.
• An individual displays signs of unusual behavior, such as looking lost, nervous, distracted, or overly friendly.
• Someone is trying to gain your trust or sympathy using a pretext, such as forgetting their ID, holding heavy items, or requiring urgent access to a restricted area.
• Once inside an organization, the person is unfamiliar with its internal procedures or layout, indicating they have visited that place for the first time.

Tailgating warning signs in digital environments

• Strange account activity, such as login at unusual times or from unexpected locations.
• The account accesses data or resources that the legitimate user does not normally have access to.
• Phishing attempts, such as emails asking you for your account ID and password.

The above are the signs that you should look for to keep yourself safe from tailgating. However, what if these attackers go unidentified? It can have severe consequences, such as the ones we discuss next. 

What Are the Consequences of Tailgating in Cyber Security

Tailgating can have severe consequences, ranging from financial loss to legal complications. Below are all these possible outcomes of tailgating for you and your organization. 

• Unauthorized access may lead to data breaches, resulting in costly consequences, such as legal penalties, regulatory fines, and remediation expenses.
• Tailgating signals weak security protocols and data protection practices, weakening public perception and stakeholder trust in the organization, and damaging its reputation.
• Tailgating may involve data privacy regulation or contractual breaches. This may increase an organization’s cost to bear legal consequences, involving penalties, lawsuits, and reputational damage.

However, the good news is that you may not have to face any of these consequences if you take steps to prevent tailgating. 

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How to Prevent Tailgating in Cyber Security

Preventing tailgating involves addressing its root cause, i.e., a lack of security awareness and social engineering. Hence, below is how to address these concerns to prevent tailgating attacks. 

• Deploy strong electronic access control systems, requiring individual authentication for entering any building or area. Some examples include biometric, role-based access control, and card-based controls.
• Conduct regular employee security awareness training sessions, educating employees about security policies and the identification of tailgating.
• Have strong visitor management systems in place to ensure no one can stay in the premises longer than intended. For example, you can assign color-coded badges to visitors, indicating the expiration times of their visit.
• Familiarize yourself and your staff with how to respond to tailgating in real life by organizing ongoing security campaigns and drills.
• Make it challenging to enter restricted areas by employing physical barriers, for instance, bollards and revolving doors.
• Ensure surveillance systems, such as cameras at entry and exit points, are in place to prevent unauthorized access.
• Use advanced detection systems that raise an alarm whenever anyone tries to follow another person through an open door without proper credentials.
• Keep reviewing your security procedures regularly to improve them as and when necessary.
• To prevent tailgating in digital environments, use MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) to deter unauthorized access, follow strict session timeout and automatic logout policies, conduct regular user awareness and training sessions, and ensure adequate device and network monitoring.

Tailgating in Cyber Security: The Conclusion

With that, we have come to the end of our detailed guide explaining the meaning of tailgating, how it works, and prevention strategies. You can detect tailgating early and prevent it with the tips in this article before it can harm you financially, socially, and legally. 

However, if you have any confusion or questions about this article, feel free to reach out through the comments section. We are also open to suggestions to improve this guide; you can share them in the comments. And, to get more such helpful tech guides delivered to you for free, subscribe to our newsletter.