Even the biggest companies fall for it. This week, reports showed that Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, sometimes referred to as CEO Fraud Emails, netted over $100 million dollars from Facebook and Google. While people are increasingly aware of phishing emails containing links and attachments, BEC scams (also known as CEO Fraud) continue to reward criminals with alarming effectiveness. These phishing scams fly past traditional security roadblocks because there are no URLs or Attachments to scan.
The success of BEC scams lies in their presentation. Here at PhishMe, we’ve written extensively on this topic. These emails appear to come from trusted sources like CEO’s and business partners, and request transfer of sums of money to a bank account, often with sense of urgency. Despite stacking security detection tools on the network, these lures often slip through because they do not contain links or attachments, only text.
The best defense against BEC scams are educated employees, and a system to report suspicious emails quickly before breaches occur, or money disappears.
For more information on PhishMe’s suite of anti-phishing solutions can help protect your business, see a demo today.
