The following reasons make BEC attacks a challenge for commercial businesses across industries. Here are the five main types of BEC scams that businesses need to defend against:
1. Bill Payment
Attackers impersonate the sender of a linkedin profile url compromised email account and send an email requesting a transfer of funds to a specific account to pay a bill.
2. CEO Fraud
Attackers impersonate the CEO or how does crystallization occur? other senior executive’s email account to email employees in the finance department and request an urgent transfer of funds to a fake account.
3. Hacking
Attackers hack an employee’s email account to extract the targeted employee’s contact list of partners, suppliers, and vendors. The attackers then send emails to a fake account requesting invoice payments.
4. Lawyer Identity
Impersonating a lawyer working for business sale lead the company’s clients, the hackers send an email to company executives requesting urgent money transfers.
5. Data Theft
Attackers target the email accounts of HR or administrative employees to email other employees to obtain personal data, which is then used to launch a more sophisticated attack against the business.
- Highly Advanced Techniques Used: Attackers use highly effective techniques to launch BEC attacks, such as:
- Spear Phishing: Fraudulent and misleading emails presented as legitimate requests from a trusted sender persuade email recipients to divulge confidential information to attackers.
- Fake Email Accounts and URLs: With minor changes to real email addresses or website domains, attackers manage to trick victims into accepting fraudulent accounts as real.
- Malware: Attackers use malware to gain access to a company’s internal data and systems and enter their networks. The information obtained through malware is sent from familiar email addresses to avoid raising suspicion when requesting a money transfer, and victims are manipulated in this way.
- BEC Results in Serious Business Impacts: In addition to potential data theft, BEC attacks pose a major economic threat to businesses. Attackers with access to sensitive company data often request payments and transfers of funds into their accounts. Additionally, if attackers obtain data on a company’s suppliers, customers, or partners, the company may lose reputation and brand value.
Business email compromise (BEC)
Email account compromise attacks focus more on people than technical vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is imperative to strategically plan a user-centric defense to proactively prevent any BEC attacks before they become a business hassle.
Here are some basic tips to help you avoid BEC scams:
- Create awareness among employees about different BEC attacks. Provide training to use open-source phishing simulation tools to understand and detect BEC risk faster.
- Create a dedicated cybersecurity team to keep the business safe.
- Regularly monitor employees for BEC awareness to ensure better education, training, and positive change in cybersecurity behavior. Constantly remind users of the risks associated with BEC.
- Define network access rules to control the use of personal devices and the sharing of information beyond the corporate network.
- Install necessary anti-malware and anti-spam software to check for security vulnerabilities.
- Keep operating systems, networks, applications and other internal software systems up to date and secure.
- To strengthen your defense mechanism, set up two-factor or multi-factor authentication for email accounts.
- Make cybersecurity awareness training and support part of the overall corporate culture.
- Be careful when sharing information online or on social media, which attackers can use to break into business email accounts by guessing passwords or answers to security questions.
- Avoid clicking links in unsolicited emails asking you to update or verify account information.
- Never open or download email attachments from unknown or suspicious senders.
- Check the spelling of email addresses carefully to prevent scammers from unnecessarily taking advantage of similar domain names.