Locks keep out criminals and allow us to sleep at night. And there’s good reason, per insurer Wawanesa, burglars first try to find unlocked doors. Wouldn’t it help you sleep better to know you’ve got the right digital locks, too?
How to Defend Against Business Email Compromise
(This is part 3 of a 3-part series on Business Email Compromise. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here)
The cost of Business Email Compromise
Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a significant financial threat. According to the FBI, BEC is the most costly type of cybercrime affecting organizations. The losses right now dwarf those of ransomware attacks. This is because BEC attacks can result in large-scale fraudulently-directed payments.
Defensive strategies to protect against BEC
To protect against BEC attacks, organizations should have a comprehensive cybersecurity program that includes the following:
- Security Awareness Training: Employees are the targets and so should be trained to stay aware of the evolving risks of BEC attacks. Also they should be trained how to identify the attacks and how to report suspicious emails.
- Phishing Campaigns: Phishing simulations can be a valuable tool to let employees safely encounter BEC emails.
- Multi-Factor Authentication: Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide multiple forms of identification, such as a password and a code sent to a different device.
- Software Updates and Patches: Keeping software and systems up-to-date with the latest security patches and updates is essential for thwarting easy entry for criminal hackers.
- Anti-Malware Per the FBI, malicious software can infiltrate company networks and gain access to legitimate email threads about billing and invoices. That information is used to time requests or send messages so accountants or financial officers don’t question payment requests. Anti-malware can alert and quarantine if malware is present in the network.
- Secure and Encrypted Email: Organizations should use secure and encrypted email systems to help protect against unauthorized access to email accounts.
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: AI and ML tools in email can be used to help detect anomalies in emails and identify potential BEC attacks.
- Dark Web Monitoring: Had a company email compromised? Stay abreast of any leaked credentials with Dark Web Monitoring.
- Incident Response Plan Organizations can plan how to respond to – who’s responsible for what roles – and diagram the steps to recover from BEC attacks.
- Data Governance Strong data governance and data protections include determining how data is collected and used and for how long sensitive customer-/client-information is maintained. Eliminating data that is not useful cuts your attack surface.
- XDR Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is a machine-learning program that comes to recognize unusual software use and suspect network traffic. It can be set to interrupt the aberrations it finds and/or alert admins about its findings.
Bryley recommends starting with an as-is assessment to have a clear idea of the effectiveness of your current security stack (contact Roy Pacitto if you’d like to schedule). Based on this work Bryley can provide a roadmap for adding what will provide your organization the most benefit. The tools on the above list are designed to stop more than BEC, but make up a healthy BEC protection.