4 Tips to Combat Business E-Mail Compromise
Tips to prevent Business E-mail Compromise (BEC) scams are crucial due to the severe financial and operational consequences they can bring. BEC, in its various forms, has persisted for years, with cybercriminals constantly adapting tactics. Impersonating individuals online or capitalizing on business trends, these threats pose a serious menace, resulting in significant losses of over US$2 billion in 2021 (FBI, 2021). As cybercriminals increase the sophistication of their attacks, it is clear that education and protection are essential but insufficient. Therefore, adequately protecting your business requires adding a layer of detection, identifying malicious behavior, alerting to threats, and enabling an appropriate response.
Here are four tips to look for that will allow you to respond quickly and appropriately to BECs:
1 – Monitor for anomalous behavior
BEC relies on mimicking human activity. An increase in remote work means businesses are relying more on cloud services like Microsoft 365 and Azure AD. Consequently, this puts more data in a complex environment currently under-protected. Once threat actors have access to Microsoft 365, accessing sensitive data is just a few clicks away. You are already expected to secure the Microsoft 365 accounts of your employees. However, traditional on-premise security solutions, such as firewalls and network sensors, cannot monitor suspicious activity in cloud-hosted applications like Microsoft 365, SharePoint, or OneDrive. Your business needs the best protection here now more than ever.
2 – Receive alerts on real threats that need immediate attention
When something is happening, you need to know immediately. However, without dedicated and experienced security staff, mistakes made in incident response can cost you time and money. Active alerting means that a team of experts has determined that an activity requires your immediate attention. As a result, this allows you to focus on what’s most important.
3 – Have visibility of threats
You need to have an overview of the risks affecting your organization. A dashboard view should provide you with a snapshot by employees, by department type, even across your whole internal database. Imagine having the ability to regularly alert your organization about the types of threats we most frequently observe.
4 – Support this level of monitoring with your IT team (or outsource)
Is your team well trained and equipped to respond to BEC threats? As the needs of your business fluctuate, you need to be able to adapt effectively. With more valuable data stored in the cloud and an increase in attacks, implementing appropriate detection measures for your cloud infrastructure is crucial. If you don’t have the capabilities within your team, consider outsourcing. A service provider like REST Solution can provide cybersecurity experts at a fraction of the cost of adding personnel. This will allow your team to continue focusing on what matters.
For further improvement in your cybersecurity strategies, we encourage you to explore our previous articles, and for more information, contact us today.
Source: FBI (2021). Internet Crime Report 2021. https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2021_IC3Report.pdf
