CISO Guide to Business Email Compromise

Business email compromise (BEC) is the most significant cybersecurity threat to enterprise organizations, with $2.7 billion lost in 2022 alone. This type of email attack occurs when a cybercriminal uses social engineering to impersonate a trusted contact—typically an executive, coworker, vendor, or partner—in an effort to steal money or valuable information. Because these emails rarely contain malicious links or attachments, they are difficult to detect by standard email security protocols, leaving organizations wide open to attack. A full 25% of the $10.9 billion in losses reported to the FBI Internet Crime Center (IC3) in 2022 was attributable directly to BEC. Over the past five years, losses from BEC attacks have more than doubled, growing by a staggering 111% between 2018 and 2022. And in the eight years since the FBI IC3 began reporting on business email compromise, total losses have risen by more than 10x.

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