According to the FBI’s 2021 Internet Crime Report, business email compromise (BEC) accounted for almost a third of the country’s $6.9 billion in cyber losses that year – around $2.4 billion. In surprisingly sharp contrast, ransomware attacks accounted for only $50 million of those losses.
In this Help Net Security video, Dror Liwer, Co-Founder of Coro, talks about what makes small and medium-sized businesses especially vulnerable to this form of attack and why BEC’s contribution to the country’s annual cyber losses not only makes sense but is likely underreported.
In stark contrast to highly disruptive ransomware attacks, BEC is subversive and is neither technically complicated nor expensive to deploy. In the case of large organizations, the financial fallout of BEC is almost negligible. That’s not the case for small and medium-sized businesses, which often lack the means to absorb similar financial losses.
BEC’s simplicity gives more credence for attackers to target smaller organizations, and because of that, it’s doubly essential for SMBs to be vigilant.