Welcome to this week’s One-Minute Wednesday. Email communication is a normal part of a company’s everyday operations, and that’s why hackers love to use phishing emails as an opportunity to steal money from businesses. In this week’s episode, we’ll outline some tips on staying secure from a unique phishing attack called a Business Email Compromise scam.
What’s a BEC Scam?
Business Email Compromise scams occur when a cybercriminal sends out a phishing email disguised as a trustworthy message and requests for an urgent money transfer. They imitate people in your organization like managers or executives to try and appear legitimate in their message by duplicating their email addresses. And if these are sophisticated enough, these emails can seem like they’re from the actual source.
So how can you stay on guard? Well here are some steps:
- First, always remain cognizant of sensitive or suspicious requests given over email, especially when they deviate from company protocols for sending wire transfers or sensitive data.
- Second, search for flaws in the email message such as typos, suspicious-looking links and attachments. These can be red flags that the email is not genuine.
- Another technique you can employ is to hover your mouse over any links in the email without clicking them. This will give you a preview of where the link is going and give you the opportunity to spot suspicious domains.
- Lastly, always verify requests you get over email in person, especially if someone is asking for emergency funds. Cybercriminals often time their scams when executives are on vacation, so they can claim to be too busy to verify the wire transfer request. But don’t let this fool you and always get confirmation in person.
So hopefully that’s a good reminder of how to stay safe from phishing attacks. Thanks for joining and come back next week for more!
