Fake President Fraud: What to do about the “Business Email Compromise” threat?

Hopefully you only know these terms from theory: Fake President Fraud, CEO Fraud, Executive Phishing – committed in the form of “Business Email Compromise (BEC)”. They all describe a classic of cybercrime that causes billions of dollars of damage worldwide: fraudulent transactions. Not only corporations and internationally active large companies are affected, but also small businesses with high turnover are targeted by Internet fraudsters. But a corporate policy in which electronic signatures are used can protect against this. 

Cyberattacks: CEO fraud – the boss scam

Fake presidential fraud is a scam in which perpetrators try to manipulate decision-making employees in companies by using false identities. In well-faked e-mails, fraudsters pretend to be bosses and arrange for large sums of money to be transferred to a foreign bank account. They often pretend to be under time pressure and refer to the strictest secrecy of the transaction.

As a rule, “boss fraud” involves large amounts (in the millions). In Austria, too, cases come to light again and again, even if not all attacks are made public: Many companies are afraid to go to the police for fear of damaging their image. In the case of Ritter Sport, the attempted fraud was prevented a few years ago, but the Bavarian car supplier Leoni AG or the Austrian-Chinese aerospace supplier FACC, for example, each fell victim to a fraud worth millions.

Fake President Fraud: How high is your fraud risk?

Are your employees sensitized to this fraud phenomenon, and is that sufficient in the event of a case? Fraud cases are also increasing due to working in a home office. The perpetrators are well-prepared and informed because they acquire the insider knowledge about the company in question necessary for the fraud in advance. They work with deceptively genuine e-mail accounts and meanwhile even with deepfakes during telephone calls.

Possible measures against CEO fraud

• Raising awareness among employees
• Open corporate culture and anti-authoritarian management style
• Clear absenteeism rules and internal control mechanisms
• Special security and approval processes for financial transactions
• Reliable protection of email accounts against unauthorized use

…Or you can go straight for prevention:

On digital signatures that prove the real origin of a message and secure the integrity of electronic documents. Take precautions with GLOBALTRUST COMPANY: suitable for companies with 50 or more e-mail addresses. With this product, you can easily create a forgery-proof digital business card for each employee.

Minimize CEO fraud risk with GLOBALTRUST COMPANY

User-friendly, secure, reliable: With an email certificate (S/MIME)  for each employee, identity theft, phishing, ransomware and fake invoices are a thing of the past.

Your company can issue the individual certificates for your employees itself via an online interface or its own interface, or revoke them immediately as soon as an employee leaves. Depending on what they are needed for, the certificates can be used for signing and encrypting e-mails, for document signing, for VPN services and login purposes (single sign-on).

Highest confidentiality, simplest application

• Easy to use with common standard software (Outlook, Firefox, …)
• You retain the sole control over certificate issuance, modification, and revocation
• Tried and Tested partner interfaces for auto-enrollment or use in mail gateways = worry-free complete service for your managed PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
• Single sign-on integration in hundreds of software products replaces time-consuming password management
• Support for integrating the certificate infrastructure (PKI) into existing systems
• Individual runtime
• Attractive conditions