CEO fraud, a variant of social engineering, caused more harm to victims than any other form of cybercrime in 2021, according to the FBI. Although this scam only ranks ninth among cybercrimes of the year in terms of the number of crimes reported, the criminals achieved by far the highest damage at $2.4 billion. This is followed by investment fraud at $1.5 billion. In their current article on WeLiveSecurity, ESET security experts show how companies can reliably protect themselves against CEO fraud and other threats.

“A third of all cybercrime damage is based on CEO fraud.
The pressure that the managing director or a senior employee immediately asks an employee to make a transfer does not allow them to think about the consequences of their own actions,” explains Thomas Uhlemann, Security Specialist at ESET. Deepfakes, i.e. artificially created audio and video files in which faces or voices are manipulated, are now cheap for perpetrators to produce. We are already aware of cases where fake audio files were used. It can be assumed that these methods and also fake videos will be used even more frequently in the future.”

What is CEO Fraud?

CEO Fraud (also known as Business Email Compromise (BEC)) is a scam in which company employees are manipulated into transferring money by misusing false identities. The perpetrators usually pose as the boss or manager of the respective company. They ask employees by email or fax to arrange an urgent transfer. In advance, the perpetrators have often obtained sensitive data from the target company and have precise knowledge of the organizational structure. Both flattered and pressured by the supposed importance, the unsuspecting employee makes the payment.

Three tips from ESET security experts

  • Pay attention to what information about your company is public and what employees post on social networks, for example.
  • Larger payment transactions should always be approved by two employees.
  • Invest in advanced security solutions that also detect attacks using social engineering methods.

The ESET experts have put together

Source: pte

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