Business email compromise (BEC) attacks

Abstract

Cybercrime is a daily threat against organizations and partners of all sizes and with the rapid development of technology and the great dependence on it in some transactions, a type of serious threats has emerged that pose a high degree of risk to companies and organizations that rely on financial transactions in their work. This type of threat is called Business Email Compromise (BEC), which is a type of email phishing for financial purposes. This attack increased dramatically and caused very high financial losses to companies, especially in the period of remote work and in the Corona crisis, as it increased in the third quarter of the century of this year by 94%. This type of threat does not require a high percentage of knowledge, experience, or skills in deception and fraud, it requires only a reasonable level of social engineering. In this paper, we contribute to analyze this threat is, how it occurs, ways to avoid it or reduce its incidence, and impact on the organization.