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Prevent Your Employees From Getting Tricked by Phishing Emails

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We all know to watch for suspicious emails. But phishing emails are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, tricking even the savviest among us. The costs to consumers, businesses and institutions keep adding up: According to the FBI, online theft, fraud and exploitation totaled $2.7 billion in financial losses in 2018.

The most expensive complaints involve business email compromise (BEC), a tool that cybercriminals use to launch many types of cybercrimes, from misdirected payment and inventory fraud to ransomware attacks.

More than a third of businesses (37%) surveyed nationally for HSB by Zogby Analytics received an email from someone pretending to be a senior manager or vendor requesting payments. The businesses reported that almost half of employees receiving those emails (47%) responded by transferring company funds, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in losses. For some types of businesses and government entities, the payment frauds can reach hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

Three Tips to Help Employees Avoid Cyber Fraud

What can a business or institution do to help prevent employees from falling for email phishing schemes? Here are three tips to avoid falling for the latest tricks:

  1. Check the Source

Before you open an email, take a moment to consider the source of the email and whether that person is likely to send you an attachment or link. Check the email address, screen name or phone number associated with the message.

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Hackers often mimic an email address that you would trust with one letter or number off from the original name or domain.

The address may even look exactly like a trusted contact but when you mouse-over the name, you can see that the address is different. A hacked email account can also be used to send malicious content, so be sure to evaluate the content of the message.

  1. Check the Content

Before you click on a link or download an attachment, take a good look. Many times, if you copy the link or name of the attachment into a search engine, you can find out whether cybercriminals are actively using the content to spread malicious content, like a virus or ransomware.

Ask yourself whether this is the type of content you usually receive from the sender. Are you expecting an attachment? Even if you are expecting an attachment, does it appear, from the name and type of file, that it is legitimate? Is the attachment or link the only content of the email?

If you have doubts, delete the message or call the sender at a number you have verified as theirs.

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Also, hackers often make an urgent request to trick victims into clicking on malicious links or files. Any urgent request sent via email should be verified in-person.

  1. What if I Clicked on the Wrong Thing?

Everyone makes mistakes. You would not be the first person to click on a bad link or download a bad file. But even if nothing happens immediately, there is no guarantee that the threat is gone.

Malware can lay dormant for weeks, months, or even years before activation. It may also be transmitting information in the background without your knowledge.

So, act as soon as you realize you clicked on a bad link or file. Alert your information technology security department right away. If you are a smaller operation, run a virus scan and keep an eye on your financial information.

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Inside a Business Email Compromise Operation

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A new report from cybersecurity company Agari’s Cyber Intelligence Division outlines the operations of a business email compromise (BEC) gang in West Africa, showing that criminals who engage in BEC online theft can have a diverse portfolio of online criminal activity that they use to build their capabilities, and use sophisticated methods to scam their victims, including businesses and government agencies.

BEC is a cyberfraud tactic in which a scammer will contact a target using phishing emails imitating a fellow employee of the target (often someone in the finance department or management) usually seeking to convince the victim to conduct a business transaction, most likely a money transfer to an account run by the scammer. The scammers may also try to trick their victims into clicking a link in an email or visiting a scam website, which could provide the scammers with the victim’s online credentials or download malware onto the victim’s computer and gain access to their company’s network.

As Risk Management previously reported, Beazley Breach Response Services found that BEC-related attacks cost victims an average of $70,960, but the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has estimated that the total “revenues” of BEC attacks doubled in 2018 to $1.3 billion. BEC attacks are also extremely common—approximately two-thirds of IT executives are reportedly dealing with them.

Agari’s report, titled “Scattered Canary: The Evolution of a West African Cybercriminal Startup,” shows that cybercriminal gangs diversify their criminal schemes, using their established infrastructure from one type of scam to facilitate others. Agari researchers named the group Scattered Canary and compared it to a tech startup because of its recruitment and expansion strategy. Scattered Canary has pursued a variety of different criminal social engineering efforts, including:

  • Romance scams: Creating a fake online romantic relationship with a victim and requesting gifts, access to their bank or retirement accounts, or services related to other scams.
  • Check fraud: A scammer offers to purchase an item for more than its advertised price with a check (which is fraudulent), then requests that the seller send the extra amount to a third party (a fictional shipping company, for example).
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  • Credential harvesting: Tricking victims into providing their online credentials, including log-in information for online financial services.

Agari says that Scattered Canary built up a network of members and the skills to easily transfer from one scheme to another.

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The group has used multiple BEC tactics over time, transitioning from tricking employees into carrying out wire transfers from their companies’ bank accounts to convincing victims to buy gift cards that scammers would then cash out via cryptocurrency exchanges.

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More recently, the group has targeted human resource departments to change the direct deposit information for a company’s executive, then cashed out the deposits using prepaid debit cards.

Businesses should train their staff at all levels on how to spot BEC and other types of online scams. If employees can recognize phishing emails and websites, and know not to click links or provide information in response to either, this can protect companies from fraud and significant financial loss. In addition to training staff, the FBI suggests always verifying requests to send money, even if the email requesting the transfer is urgent, by speaking directly to the person who seems to be requesting the money on the phone (using the previously known number, not the one provided in the email) or in person. The FBI also suggests setting up filters that flag email addresses that are similar to the company’s email, and creating an email rule that notes emails coming from outside the company, among other technical steps.

For more from Risk Management about controlling the risks of BEC and other social engineering fraud, check out:

How Phishing Emails Can Threaten Your Company

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Impostor emails, dubbed “business email compromise” by the FBI, are increasing and targeting companies of every size, in every part of the world. Unfortunately, victims often do not realize they have been had until it’s too late. There are no security tool alarms and there is no ransom note. But because systems appear to be running as normal, everything seems like business as usual. And that is the point, according to Proofpoint’s study, “The Imposter in the Machine.”
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From New Zealand to Belgium, companies from every industry have suffered losses, the study found. Here is a small sampling of recent impostor attacks during the last year:

  • A Hong Kong subsidiary at Ubiquiti Networks Inc. discovered that it had made more than $45 million in payments over an extended period to attackers using impostor emails to pose as a supplier.
  • Crelan, a Belgian bank recently lost more than $70 million due to impostor emails, discovering the fraud only after the company conducted an internal audit.
  • In New Zealand, a higher education provider, TWoA, lost more than $100,000 when their CFO fell victim to an impostor email, believing the payment request came from the organization’s president.
  • Luminant Corp., an electric utility company in Dallas, Texas sent a little over $98,000 in response to an email request that they thought was coming from a company executive. Later it was learned that attackers sent an impostor email from a domain name with just two letters transposed.

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Most often, company executives are targeted, with two common angles. In one case, the always-traveling executive is studied by attackers, who use every resource available to understand the target’s schedule, familiar language, peers and direct reports. Because the executive is frequently on the road, direct reports who routinely process payments can easily be victimized.

Another ploy involves suppliers and how they invoice.

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For example, the supplier’s language, forms and procedures are used to change bank account information for an upcoming payment. If the attackers are successful, a company may find that they have been making payments to them for months without knowing it.

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For more about the risks of phishing, check out “The Devil in the Details” and “6 Tips to Reduce the Risk of Social Engineering Fraud” from Risk Management.