Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a digital crime that has the potential to cause a great deal of damage to a company’s finances. Even the smartest people can fall prey to this scheme when it is elegantly crafted. In a BEC attack, key employees are targeted in order to glean sensitive business information or even to trick them into surrendering money through email-based fraud.
Hackers send fraudulent emails that appear to be from a legitimate source like the CEO or CFO of the company, a business partner, or someone well known to the victim. These emails are socially engineered to cause the recipient to reveal confidential or financial information, or they may ask for immediate payment with an element of urgency.
BEC is a form of phishing, a popular tool for hackers. Through a phishing email, the cybercriminals gain direct access to your email account, including the contact information of trusted contacts. Once they are into your account, they can reroute wire transfers, steal your personal information, and use your email account for other nefarious purposes.
Forms Business Email Compromise
The FBI Cybercrime division reveals phishing statistics that show the total damages caused by BEC are around $1.7 Billion annually—about half of all the damages due to cyberattacks. Business Email Compromise falls into five primary types, according to the FBI.
CEO Fraud: During this type of attack, the hacker may use the guise of the company’s CEO or executive and send an email with a pretext to a department head asking for a wire transfer, funds transfer, or other financial transaction.
Impersonating An Attorney: In this scam, the cybercriminal impersonates a lawyer or other legal representative. Most of these attacks are directed at lower-level employees since they don’t know much about the law and can easily be tricked with the perpetrator’s bogus requests or questions.
False Invoice Scam: This is the most common and easy BEC method. The attacker poses as a vendor and asks for payment of invoices for work performed for the victim company. They often disguise the fraud by posing as the actual vendor with a legitimate template but substitute the hacker’s bank account information in place of the real bank account.
Account Compromise: In the Account Compromise attack, the hacker exploits a company’s compromised email account. Once the cybercriminal has used a phishing ploy to get access to an email account inside the company, they use the email account to solicit payment from customers and then transfer those funds to their own account.
Data Theft: Business Email Compromise attacks don’t just entail stealing money from businesses. Attacks can target the financial and human resources departments of organizations to steal confidential data about their employees. That information can be used in many ways, from selling IDs on the black market to holding the data hostage for ransom.
How To Prevent BEC Attacks?
Preventing Business Email Compromise attacks isn’t easy. However, by implementing strong multi-factor authentications and increasing user education, the risk of getting hacked through BEC attacks can be minimized to a great extent. If successful, BEC attacks can cause considerable damage to the company. However, by taking precautionary measures, these attacks can be prevented. For example:
Employee Education: Business Email Compromise attacks are mostly geared toward the employees of your company. Therefore, it is essential to implement email security awareness within your organization. Educate your employees about how to detect the attack, what steps to take when they face one, and what practices are essential to reduce the risk of getting duped by these attacks.
External Email Labeling: BEC attacks usually attempt to masquerade as internal email addresses with similar-yet-different domains or domain spoofing. Setting up your email program in a way that labels all external emails (i.e. emails coming from outside the organization) can help defeat this technique.
Anti-Phishing Protection: Since Business Email Compromise attacks are a form of phishing, implementing anti-phishing solutions within the company’s security system is vital to prevent these attacks. Anti-phishing protection, such as Trustifi’s advanced secure email solution, not only detects the BEC emails but also uses an advanced AI algorithm to filter suspicious looking emails. Trustifi provides a high level of encryption, data loss prevention, and advanced threat protection. It is a cost-effective, user-friendly, cloud-based solution trusted by thousands of companies across multiple platforms.
Final Thoughts:
BEC attacks are becoming commonplace, and if successful, they can cause significant financial damage to your company. Hence, it is vital to take action against such attacks and make your security airtight. Trustifi offers the most advanced email security service in the market today. Contact a Trustifi representative for a demonstration of their superior defense system and learn how affordably and conveniently you can protect your company.
