The Impact of Business Email Compromise
$125,600
The Average Amount a Company Loses to a Business Email Compromise (BEC) Attack
Business Email Compromise (BEC) is one of the most financially damaging online crimes. With losses topping more than $2.7 billion last year and a year-over-year increase in attacks of 14.5%, BEC is a significant threat.
What Is BEC?
In a BEC scam, criminals send an email message that appears to come from a known source making a legitimate request, like these examples:
Versions of these scenarios happened to real victims. All the messages were fake. And in each case, thousands—or even hundreds of thousands—of dollars were sent to criminals instead.
How BEC Works
In this graphic – provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – a BEC attack is conducted through careful research to identify targets, groom company representatives, make the request, and finally, secure a fraudulent payment.
Courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Examples of some of the more damaging BEC attacks can be found here.
The ABC’s of Avoiding BEC Scams
Scammers do their homework to make their communications sound believable. They may research company executives’ social media accounts and reference company posts to make their demands sound more realistic.
But in most cases, breaking up a BEC attack is as simple as picking up the phone to verify instructions or reading between the lines to see if an email really “sounds like” the person you know. BEC attacks are preventable. The ABCs below provide a good start for minimizing your company’s risk.
A – Avoid
B – Be Proactive
C – Check and Double-Check
As is the case with most cybercrimes, it’s much easier to prevent a BEC attack than to recover from one. In addition to the financial loss, victims of a BEC attack can end up tied up in lawsuits with customers, vendors, and insurers for years. The cost in time, resources, and reputation warrants taking a few extra seconds to follow the ABCs and keep your business safe.
