From the report, “BEC is a specific type of phishing email that operates without links and without attachments (two of the standard markers that perimeter defenses look for). However, instead of taking over a computer or stealing data, BEC hackers impersonate an executive (a known CEO, CFO or other CxO), and persuade the recipient (an employee) to perform some action – like wiring money or attaching information to an email. " Read on to learn more.

From the report, “The large-scale attacks and disastrous outcomes in this paper underscore the fact that targeted phishing is the overwhelming cause of nearly all breaches. Phishing attacks cost companies an incalculable amount of money, prestige, goodwill, confidential data, and competitive advantage, as well as brand identity and integrity. The Verizon Data Breach Investigations report supports the overwhelming impact of phishing, which targets businesses consistently across email, web, and network traffic. Siloed approaches lead only to siloed and ineffective protection. Partial, reactive defenses such as employee education, perimeter protection, and spam filtering simply don’t work against today’s phishing threats.”

On September 7th, 2017 Equifax disclosed the occurrence of data breach that occurred between May 2017 and July 2017. Equifax discovered the breach in July 2017. Initial estimates suggest that up to 143 million people could be affected. Credit card information of approximately 209,000 cardholders and personally identifiable information of 182,000 consumers was also compromised. Given past history with similar such breaches, additional impact is likely to be uncovered over time.