Business email compromise (BEC) is a type of cybercrime where the attacker specifically uses email to trick someone into revealing confidential details or transfer money. The problem has grown and has become widespread over the years, targeting worldwide companies. Studies have suggested that BEC scams have recorded almost $55 billion financial losses in the last decade. Thus, it has emerged as one of the financially disruptive cybercrimes in recent times. These attacks are quite dangerous to detect because they do not contain any nefarious links, attachments, malware, or elements that email security measures can recognize.

In this blog, let us dissect BEC in detail and discover ways to safeguard your business against it. 


Business Email Compromise (BEC)-Definition


It can be defined as a form of cyberattack that leverages email and social engineering attacks to defraud a company. In simple terms, here the attackers pose as trusted individuals and ask for billing details, financial data, or any other critical information that can be used in another scam. Essentially, the attacker sends the email to trick the victim into performing some action. Majorly, it involves sending money to the attackers’ account or to fraudulent channels.


BEC attacks are very tricky to detect because they do not look like conventional email attacks with suspicious attachments, links, or malware. Such elements can easily be identified by email security measures and then email can be termed suspicious. However, in the case of BEC attacks, the emails usually contain nothing but text. BEC emails can enter your inbox among your other trusted emails.


Not only can BEC attacks easily bypass robust email security gateways, but are uniquely designed to encourage recipients to open them. The message also contains specific motivators that push people toward taking an urgent action. Business email compromise attackers leverage personalization techniques to tailor the email message as per the target organization. For example, an attacker can impersonate someone the victim regularly communicates via the email.


Why Are BEC Attacks Difficult to Detect?



Businesses have the hard time spotting BEC attacks because of the following reasons:


Low-Volume Attack: One of the reasons email security systems can detect conventional cybersecurity attacks is through unusual traffic of emails. On the contrary, BEC attacks come in extremely low volume and generally do not cause any major spike in email traffic. Since BEC emails are sent in low volume, a cyber attacker gets the time to quickly change the IP address. Therefore, BEC campaigns are also quite difficult to be blocked as well.


They Have a Reliable Source or Domain: Phishing attacks can be easily identified because they come from domains that can easily be spotted and blacklisted. Since BEC attacks are low volume, the culprit can use a credible IP address with a good reputation to trick email security systems. Attackers also use a concept called email domain spoofing to make recipients realize that emails have come from a genuine sender.


They Come Through DMARC Inspection: DMARC is protocol for recognizing emails that have come from a domain without authorization. It can detect whether the sender has impersonated a domain. BEC scams can pass this DMARC check mainly due to two reasons: 1) some organizations do not choose to strictly configure DMARC to block emails strictly and 2) since BEC emails look to come from a legitimate source, they easily pass through these checks.


Is Secure Email Gateways Effective Against Business Email Compromise (BEC) Campaigns?


A secure email gateway is a robust security measure that leverages signature analysis and machine learning technology to recognize and block suspicious emails before they even arrive at the recipient’s inbox. They are effective in filtering out dangerous email and can be a good solution against cyberthreats like spear phishing. Originally, SEGs were designed to deal with spam and they used to get a considerable amount of samples to know what suspicious emails look like.


However, in the case of BEC, there is no malware, ransomware, phishing links, or other overly suspicious content that can easily be detected. Therefore, it is more difficult to identify BEC emails. SEGs would require additional machine learning algorithms and threat intelligence features to be more effective against BEC attacks. Users must use advanced SEGs to have a higher chance of preventing BEC attacks.


How to Ensure Protection Against BEC Attacks?


One of the ways users can identify BEC attacks is the sudden and unexpected nature of emails. Attackers might pose themselves as genuine and even authoritative, but they would usually ask you to perform an activity quite urgently. If you know the sender, then it is advisable to cross-check with the person directly to see whether he or she has sent the email or not.


Businesses can also lay out email security policies to train staff about the potency of these attacks. There are also other technical measures businesses can take to ensure protection against BEC attacks-


Sophisticated Detection of Phishing Infrastructure


There are some email providers who assess the web in advance to keep track of fake websites, C&C servers, and other strategies cyber attackers can use in BEC campaigns or phishing attacks. This process basically requires web crawler bots to find these servers and fake websites. Recognizing these attacking sources and infrastructure allows the provider to block the emails immediately even if they look genuine and can pass through email security systems.


Machine Learning Algorithms


Machine learning is a great technology to forecast outcomes based on large historical data. It is an effective strategy to detect all activities that look out of the ordinary such as bot attacks. By analyzing your historical data, machine learning tools can easily help you spot unusual email traffic, odd requests, and other anomalies.


Analysis of Email Threats


There are some BEC campaigns that slide through an existing email thread to improve their genuineness. Robust email security measures can analyze these threads closely and see whether subtle details such as “To” and “From” have been changed unexpectedly.


Analyze Emails


User smartness and training are key to preventing BEC attacks. For example, a user can spot key phrases and anomalies which might indicate suspicious nature of the emails. For example, if you receive an email from John about something related to customer relations, and you know that John is from accounts, then it is an indication of a BEC attack. Users can use NLP tools to monitor certain patterns and detect predetermined keywords within an email.


Conclusion


One of the reasons BEC scams are on the rise is due to an increase in the number of remote work happening all around the world. In the last year alone, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has received around 20,000 complaints. The blog explores all the fundamentals of Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, why they are dangerous and difficult to detect and how to protect your business from them. For more informative blogs on emails, email technologies, and steps to do when your email is hacked, check out the blog section!