• Why IRONSCALES
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    Learn how Webhelp saved over 450 SecOp hours and is protecting 36,000 mailboxes

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    Email Security in the Age of AI
    Email Security in the Age of AI

    Understand the role of AI in fortifying defenses against evolving threats.

    QR Code Phishing
    QR Code Phishing

    QR codes serve as a new bypass method to evade detection.

    The ABCs of MFA
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    MFA is your digital doorman that keeps the malicious actors at bay.

    Phishing Prevention
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Business Email Compromise (BEC) Attacks

Discover the various methods hackers used to circumvent standard security tools with BEC, and how you keep your business safe.

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BEC Attacks Image-1

What is Business Email Compromise?

Business Email Compromise attacks are one of the biggest threats to every industry. BEC schemes cost an estimated $2.7 Billion in 2021, and that number is only projected to skyrocket in the coming years. Whether you’re in the commercial, government, and non-profit sector, you are at risk of BEC attacks.

BEC attackers use low-tech financial fraud that targets companies’ sensitive data. They do not leverage malicious URLs or malware attachments. Therefore their attacks easily bypass signature-based prevention mechanisms used by Secure Email Gateways. And other legacy BEC safeguards — such as DMARC — are only effective against a small subset of phishing threats.

Breaking Down A Business Email Compromise Attack

  • Pretext
    • Internal Employee
    • Brand
    • External Partner/Vendor Delivery
  • Approach
    • Impersonation
      • Spoofing
      • Look-alike Domains
      • Display Name
    • Compromised Account
      • Employee
      • Partner/Vendor/Brand
  • Delivery
    • Attachment
    • URL
    • Payload-less
  • Target
    • Employee Inbox

How Does Business Email Compromise Work?

A BEC attacker leverages social engineering tactics — typically accompanied by email spoofing or email compromise via phishing attacks or keystroke logging — to obtain employee credentials and access sensitive information.

While BEC attacks can involve many different vectors, they often start when an attacker sends an email to an employee with authorization to send wire transfer payments, requesting a change in business payment from the impersonated address of a supervisor, CEO, or trusted vendor.

Since the request comes from a seemingly trusted source, an employee will comply with the request. They don’t realize that this request has given the attacker the upper hand and compromised their organization’s safety.

Get Complete Mailbox BEC Protection From IRONSCALES

Types of BEC Attacks

There are many different types of BEC attacks. Since these scams do not always leverage traditional attack vectors like attachments or malicious links, they may evade identification safeguards. Knowing what types of BEC attacks exist can help you from becoming a victim.

CEO Fraud

CEO fraud attacks involve impersonations of the CEO or other C-Suite executives. The attacker uses fraudulent credentials to direct employees in financial roles to transfer money to specific accounts.

Account Takeover

Account takeover uses a trusted employee or executive’s email account to solicit vendors for invoice payments with new bank account information. Then these invoice payments are deposited into criminal bank accounts.

Learn more about Account Takeover

Credential Theft

Credential theft attacks are often the catalyst to account takeover attacks. These attacks involve stealing a victim’s proof of identity using phishing tools like fake login-pages or keystroke loggers. Once an attacker gains access to a victim’s account privileges there is an open back door. They can sell those credentials on the dark web or use them to inflict massive financial and reputational damage to your organization.

Invoice Fraud

Invoice attacks involve impersonation of an external partner/vendor, internal employee, or brand to deliver a fraudulent invoice request. Often the attacker requests fund transfers that unsuspecting employees deposited into criminal bank accounts. These requests don’t contain malware, so they go undetected by SEGs. Invoice attacks are costly, and they account for some of the most significant financial losses in BEC schemes.

Common Business Email Compromise Methods & Tactics

Attackers utilize many different vectors to invade your network. Two of the most frequent are email impersonation and email spoofing.

Email Sender Impersonation

Email impersonation uses lookalike credentials of a specific person or entity to impersonate a known sender. Because lookalike credentials are visually similar to a targeted user, targeted brand, or targeted domain, many people cannot spot the discrepancy. For example, the exact email address of stevejobs@techcompany.com might be impersonated with the similar looking stevejabs@techcompany.com

Email Spoofing

Email spoofing involves an attacker sending a message from -- or as a representative of -- an authenticated domain. These attacks may appear to come from legitimate addresses, but with slight variations that cloak the attacker. There are different types of email spoofing including lookalike/cousin domain, and exact domain. For example, the exact email address of stevejobs@techcompany.com, might be spoofed with the lookalike/cousin domain stevejobs@tecchcompany.com, Or the attack could come from an exact domain spoof as stevejobs@techcompany.com

Learn More About Email Spoofing

How To Stop Business Email Compromise Attacks

Email is an essential tool for any modern business. Preventing business email compromise attacks is a problem for all businesses. In the face of increasingly sophisticated email attacks, many organizations are looking for solutions for stopping BEC attacks. And many are struggling to find a truly comprehensive solution. IRONSCALES comprehensive SaaS platform gives you an edge against all attackers with an inside out approach to email security. The IRONSCALES platform protects your organization from BEC attacks by analyzing all email communications and creating unique fingerprint profiles for each user. By cross-checking and verifying all incoming messages, IRONSCALES gives you confidence in a sender’s identity while protecting your assets — all in real-time.

Get Complete Mailbox BEC Protection from IRONSCALES

Protect Yourself from Email Spoofing with IRONSCALES

IRONSCALES is a leading email security company focused on fighting back against today’s modern phishing attacks. Our self-learning, AI-driven platform continuously detects and remediates advanced threats like Business Email Compromise (BEC), credential harvesting, Account Takeover (ATO) and more. We believe our powerfully simple email security solution is fast to deploy, easy to manage and keeps our customers safe. Founded in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2014 by alumni of the Israel Defense Force’s elite Intelligence Technology unit, IRONSCALES is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. We are proud to support thousands of customers globally with our award-winning, analyst-recognized platform. Visit www.ironscales.com and connect with us on LinkedIn to learn more.

Learn more about what IRONSCALES has to offer by scheduling a demo today.