Business Email Compromise is on the Rise Again

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Business Email Compromise Scams Never Go Out of Style

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Business email compromise (BEC) isn’t as high-profile as splashy cybercrime like ransomware or hacking, but it’s still a huge part of the threat landscape. Cybercrime is up dramatically across the board – Dark Web activity increased by 44 percent, with a corresponding 80 percent jump in overall cybercrime – and BEC is part of that trend with an overall 14 percent increase, and an up to 80 percent surge in some industries.

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Every Industry is at Risk

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BEC fraud is a bit more challenging than your average cybercrime, making it a less popular category than simple phishing. But that certainly doesn’t make it any less dangerous or damaging. In 2020, BEC costs increased rapidly, from $54,000 in Q1 2020 to $80,183 in Q2. It accounted for half of all losses in the previous year and the majority of cyber-insurance claims.

BEC fraud is also insidious, and no industry is safe. The biggest target observed in one 2020 study was the energy and infrastructure sector with 93 percent of attacks. Other industries with a high number of weekly BEC attacks were retail and consumer goods and manufacturing and technology. Overall, BEC was continuing to rise in 75 percent of the tracked industries.

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Protecting Your Business from BEC is as Easy as 1-2-3

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Choosing a smart array of cybersecurity solutions that work together to provide layered protection is an effective strategy to protect your business from rising BEC and data breach risk. Not only do we make that painless with solutions that feature user-friendly functionality and seamless integration, but we also make it affordable by packing loads of features into each cost-effective building block of a strong defense against cybercrime like BEC.

Secure identity and access management with Passly adds immediate protection against BEC and credential compromise in general. One essential facet of Passly is multifactor authentication, a tool that can stop up to 99 percent of cyberattacks on its own. Combined with single sign-on, sure shared password vaults, and simple remote management, choosing Passly could be the single best cybersecurity decision you make this year.

Watching for potential trouble from credential compromise with Dark Web ID is also a smart way to reduce risk. The 24/7/365 monitoring and analysis that Dark Web ID provides stops unfortunate credential compromise surprises from Dark Web sources, like lists of stolen passwords in Dark Web markets or data dumps, mitigating the risk of bad actors using a stolen password to gain access to your systems and data.

Phishing is always at the top of the list of threats to your business, and that’s no different when it comes to BEC. With a more than 600 percent jump in phishing attacks in 2020, improved phishing resistance training with BullPhish ID is a must-have for every organization. Plus, we’ve just made training with BullPhish ID more pleasant and painless for everyone with user-friendly training portals, customization options, and upgraded reports.

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Contact the experts at ID Agent today to discuss your potential risks including business email compromise and come up with a plan that helps mitigate them to give you greater peace of mind.

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