Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) of FBI has recently released its 2019 Internet Crime Report.

Total losses from cybercrime in the US amounted to $ 3.5 billion (and 467 361 complaints). But one figure surprised us very much: losses from business email compromises (BEC) or email account compromises (EAC) reached $ 1.79 billion (51.1%) while IC3 received only 23 775 complaints (5.1%) of it. This shows how costly business email compromise may be and how a negligent attitude to mail can cause a company significant losses.

The first email cybercrimes appeared with the invention of email back in the late 80s. And the data from numerous security reports shows that email as a tool for malicious activity hasn’t lost its relevance for over 40 years.

Sophisticated scam techniques including social engineering, spoofing, compromising of personal and vendor emails aimed to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds. Therefore, people working with business email should always be alert and critical of each incoming email, especially when it comes to payments, wire transfers, gift card purchases or employee’s request to update their direct deposit information for the current pay period, etc.

Here are some tips you can take to reduce the risk of email fraud:

• special attention to emails requesting any personal / confidential information or payments;
• create rules for the mail server or SPAM filter, that flag e-mails with extensions that are similar to company e-mail (variants with additional symbols, different letters or numbers, etc.);
• configure color marking of email addresses of company employees;
• create an e-mail rule to flag e-mail communications where the “reply” e-mail address is different from the “from” e-mail address shown;
• use two-factor authentication for the services your company uses;
• additionally, coordinate payment transactions via corporate chat or by phone (but not by that one which is in the suspicious email).

Forgery of electronic correspondence has become very sophisticated and difficult to distinguish for an untrained employee, so your company must have a plan B to carry out important operations.

Our platform for secure communication and collaboration SWISS SECURIUM® reduces the risk of such incidents.

Encrypted platform messenger with chats and audio / video calls will allow your employees to communicate directly in real time and securely share files and co-edit them. VPN access to platform cloud and two-factor authentication protect company files from unauthorized users. Password manager helps to securely store credentials for working services and accounts: there’s no need to keep passwords in unsafe notebook or Excel file.

Your employees can still use email. But instant messaging and file sharing surely make workflow more efficient and coordinated, reduce the time required for negotiation, and a direct video call will solve all issues with the authenticity of information received by email!

Choosing our SWISS SECURIUM® platform you obtain:

• Secure encrypted messenger with audio / video calls;
• Email service;
• Protected cloud with file sharing and co-editing;
• Password manager;
• App for two-factor authentication.

The world doesn’t stand still, the use of email is no longer the most efficient way of communication and confidential data transfer. It’s even unsafe! Keep up to date and communicate confidently using our platform!

Inquire a free trial of SWISS SECURIUM®, here

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