Business email compromise (BEC) attacks are a type of cybercrime that involve tricking businesses into sending money or sharing sensitive information via email. Unlike traditional phishing, however, BEC attacks rarely use malware or malicious links, which makes them harder to detect.
Common BEC tactics include impersonating a CEO or high-level executive to request urgent money transfers, posing as a legitimate vendor and requesting a change in payment information and compromising a real email account to send fraudulent requests from within the organization.
BEC attacks are a serious threat, costing businesses billions of dollars annually. In fact, in 2022, the U.S. Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that BEC attacks caused losses exceeding $2.7 billion. BEC incidents were also the second-leading cause of financial loss for Resilience clients in 2023, according to the company's mid-year claims report.
So, what do businesses need to do to fight against BEC attacks? They need to adopt more innovative risk management and mitigation strategies than traditional incident response is becoming necessary.
Resilience, a cyber risk company founded by veterans of the U.S. military and intelligence communities alongside leaders from cybersecurity, technology and insurance, offers integrated solutions to help organizations achieve cyber resilience and mitigate financial losses. Expanding its capabilities to help with the fight against BEC attacks, the company recently acquired BreachQuest, an innovative incident response technology solution.
Integrating with cloud office systems with ease, the BreachQuest platform offers valuable forensic insights to aid in faster incident response, reduced containment times and lower costs. Additionally, BreachQuest's capabilities allow Resilience's Claims Management team to proactively address cyber incidents more effectively.
"Resilience shares our mission in helping improve a client's cyber resilience and lowering the impact of costly cyber incidents," said Shaun Gordon, BreachQuest co-founder and CEO.
For Resilience, this strategic acquisition further highlights the importance of adapting to the speed and scale of how cyber threats continue to evolve. There is a need for integrated cyber risk management and better incident preparedness, all in the service of helping clients be resilient to material losses.
“Cybercriminals are becoming smarter and faster in how they execute business email compromise, and with the addition of tools like generative AI being added to their arsenal, the threat is only growing,” said Vishaal "V8" Hariprasad, co-founder and CEO at Resilience. “BreachQuest helps us address this and so much more. Their team and technology have been proven to reduce the financial impact of one of the largest areas of cyber risk facing our clients.”
Edited by
Alex Passett
