Attack Technique
Business Email Compromise (BEC)
Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a sophisticated social engineering attack that targets organizations by compromising legitimate email accounts. Attackers leverage trusted communication channels to deceive employees, leading to unauthorized financial transactions, data theft, or exposure of sensitive information.
Definition
What is Business Email Compromise?
Business Email Compromise involves the manipulation or takeover of genuine business email accounts. Attackers use this technique to impersonate executives or trusted partners, sending fraudulent requests that can prompt employees to initiate unauthorized actions, such as transferring funds or disclosing confidential data.
How it works
How Business Email Compromise Works?
Attackers deploy several methods in BEC campaigns, including:
- Phishing attacks: Crafting highly convincing emails that appear to originate from trusted sources, tricking employees into divulging sensitive information or executing unauthorized transactions.
- Email account takeover: Gaining access to legitimate email accounts through credential theft, allowing attackers to operate from within the organization.
- Social engineering: Exploiting publicly available information and internal communication patterns to create messages that align with an organization’s typical correspondence.
- Spoofing: Faking email addresses or domains that closely mimic legitimate company communications, making fraudulent emails appear authentic.
Why attackers use it
Why Attackers Leverage Business Email Compromise
BEC is particularly attractive to cyber adversaries for several reasons:
- High success rates: The exploitation of human trust enables BEC attacks to bypass traditional security measures.
- Financial gain: BEC often results in unauthorized wire transfers or fraudulent invoice payments, causing significant financial losses.
- Data access: Compromised email accounts can grant attackers access to sensitive internal communications and confidential data, further facilitating exploitation.
- Stealth: Because BEC leverages trusted communication channels, malicious activities can remain undetected for extended periods, increasing the potential impact.
Platform Detections
How to Prevent and Detect Business Email Compromise
Mitigating the risk of BEC requires a proactive, multi-layered approach:
- Deploy advanced email security: Utilize robust email filtering and anti-phishing solutions to block suspicious emails before they reach employees.
- Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Strengthen account security by requiring MFA, making it more difficult for attackers to compromise email credentials.
- Employee awareness training: Regularly educate staff on BEC tactics and the importance of verifying unusual or sensitive email requests through alternate channels.
- Implement verification protocols: Introduce additional steps for confirming sensitive transactions, such as secondary communication channels or managerial approvals.
- Leverage AI-driven detection: Use AI-powered threat detection platforms to monitor email traffic, identify anomalies, and flag behaviors indicative of BEC activities.
The Vectra AI Platform employs advanced AI-driven threat detection to continuously analyze email communication patterns. By correlating anomalous behaviors with known BEC indicators, the platform enables security teams to rapidly identify and remediate potential incidents before significant damage occurs.
