What is a BEC Threat?
Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a type of cyber threat that aims to manipulate people into acting in the interests of a cyber criminal. These threats often involve the impersonation of a trusted individual who appears to request sensitive information and/or the transfer of funds.
These threats are among the most expensive types of threats to contend with, and cost businesses billions of dollars in clean-up costs each year.
The Quiet Proliferation of BEC Threats
Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are quietly proliferating in large-part due to developments in the field of artificial intelligence. Forty percent of current BEC threats were written with the help of AI.
The spike in AI-powered BEC attacks is having a major impact on organizations of all kinds. In the U.S., the FBI received over 20,000 BEC complaints last year. Reported losses totaled $2.9 billion, making BEC the top business-related cyber crime in the country.
Cyber criminals have recognized artificial intelligent as cheap, easy to use, and capable of contributing to successful results, which explains the deluge of AI-powered BECs.
Why AI-powered BECs Work
It’s not just that AI-powered BEC attacks look perfect, although they are often grammatically impeccable and stylistically seamless. Rather, the threat actors who develop AI-powered BECs also use personal data, pulled from the web via algorithms, to target specific organizations or individuals.
Data may be analyzed in order to achieve linguistic mimicry, to adapt to regional language variations and colloquialisms and/or to match the level of formality that a given person or organization prefers.
In essence, the level of sophistication involved in modern BEC threats increases the threats’ perceived legitimacy, heightening the probability of successful business compromise.
How You Can Stop AI-powered BECs
AI-powered cyber security tools must become an integral part of each and every business’s cyber security strategy. They are significantly more capable than the rule and signature-based solutions of an earlier era.
According to our research, 51% of advanced phishing threats can only be identified and stopped through the use of AI and machine-learning (ML) powered technologies.
Unlike traditional tools, AI and ML-powered solutions can ‘ingest’ the information around them – from archived emails, to reports and other materials – in order to build a customized profile for an organization, enabling the tooling to stop emails that look suspicious in the context of day-to-day business operations.
When it comes to tooling, our AI is also specifically trained on advanced threats that were designed to evade cyber security measures. With Harmony Email & Collaboration, organizations exponentially increase their levels of cyber security protection and substantially reduce risk.
Protect your organization from the most sophisticated cyber threats. Leverage AI-powered tooling built into Harmony Email & Collaboration. Learn more here or sign-up to get a demo of the best security tools on the market.