The Threat of Business Email Compromise (BEC)

Business email compromise attacks are skyrocketing, as are global losses — more than $1.8 billion last year, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report. The average loss from business email compromise attacks is nearly $93,000. This scam is so successful it recently eclipsed ransomware as the number one cyber insurance claim.

To protect your enterprise from business email compromise, SpyCloud offers password monitoring and early detection, which can stop ATO before it happens.

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How Does Business Email Compromise Work?

Criminals can compromise employee email accounts via phishing, social engineering, or the use of reused credentials that have been exposed in third-party data breaches. Once they have control of an account, threat actors can use it for other malicious purposes, such as stealing sensitive information, committing fraud, or extending their reach into additional accounts. With access to the account owners’ inbox, attackers can craft convincing-looking phishing e-mails in the victim’s own writing style, tricking customers, partners, or colleagues into thinking the phish is a legitimate email from a trusted source.

One employee’s compromised business email account can put your enterprise data, funds, intellectual property, and brand reputation in danger. SpyCloud helps by alerting you when employee accounts are vulnerable to business email compromise because their passwords are available to criminals on the deep and dark web.

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Combat Business Email Compromise with SpyCloud

Defending against sophisticated social engineering methods is difficult. Experts agree that humans are often the weakest link in any organization’s security posture — and the most difficult to remediate. But it can be done, through ambitious and effective education of each and every employee who needs need technology to do their job. Organizations can also update acceptable use policies to implement mandate security best practices for all employees.

On its own, employee education is not enough. Enterprises can take proactive measures to prevent business email compromise by protecting vulnerable employee accounts with SpyCloud. SpyCloud checks employee passwords against a database of nearly 100 billion breach assets and alerts security teams when there’s a match. By identifying passwords that are available to criminals, enterprises can protect exposed accounts before criminals have a chance to use them for business email compromise.

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Protect Executives at Work and at Home

Some employees are at higher risk of BEC than others. Senior executives, board members, and employees with privileged access to corporate secrets are especially compelling targets for cybercriminals, who may put extra effort into compromising their accounts. Executives’ personal accounts, which are typically outside of corporate protection, can provide a motivated attacker with stepping stones to your organization’s resources.

SpyCloud helps enterprises protect employees both at work and at home. With SpyCloud VIP Guardian, you can alert at-risk executives when their personal account passwords are exposed in a data breach, enabling them to protect themselves—and your organization—from account takeover that could lead to BEC.

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Monitor Your Supply Chain to Stay Ahead of Vendor Email Compromise

While your own employees may not fall victim to a typical BEC scam, vendor email compromise — a relatively new but growing type of attack — seeks to leverage suppliers to gain access to their customers. Think about it: the typical global company has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of vendor partners around the world. With privileged access to corporate data and trusted relationships with your employees, even one compromised vendor account can result in significant damage to your enterprise.

SpyCloud Third Party Insight enables you to monitor your supply chain for breach exposures that may put your own organization at risk. When you identify a high-risk vendor or partner, SpyCloud makes it easy for you to share detailed access to the data they need to remediate their exposures.

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