Business Email Compromise | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

BEC accounted for over $3 billion in reported losses last year alone. Most organizations don't realize they're exposed until it's too late. Here's how to tell if your defenses have gaps. Business email compromise doesn't announce itself. There's no ransomware splash screen, no locked files, no dramatic system outage. Instead, a finance team member processes what looks like a routine vendor payment update. A controller wires funds based on what appears to be a CFO's direct request. By the time anyone notices, the money is gone. The FBI IC3's 2024 Internet Crime Report documented $55 billion in cumulative BEC losses over the past decade, with $3 billion in 2024 alone — making it the most financially destructive enterprise-targeted cyber threat in the country. The challenge with BEC is that it exploits trust, not technology. These attacks carry no malicious payload for a gateway to catch — just carefully crafted messages designed to manipulate human judgment. That makes traditional de...

For security leaders, the inbox remains the front door for attackers. Here's why the smartest teams are adding adaptive, AI-driven protection to their cloud email security, not replacing them. Email is still the number-one attack vector for enterprises, and it is not even close. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise alone generated $3 billion in losses in 2024 , with AI-enabled attacks accelerating the trend ( FBI IC3 Report ). The attacks that succeed today don't carry obvious malicious payloads. They rely on trust, tone, and timing; a spoofed vendor sending a "routine" invoice update, or a convincing impersonation of a CEO with an urgent request. No malware. No suspicious links. Just words, carefully chosen. Microsoft 365 is the backbone of productivity for most organizations, and Microsoft Defender and Exchange Online Protection do solid work catching known spam, malware, and co...