YOUR BUSINESS SPRING 2019 - 166

YO U R B U S I N E S S _ P R O M OT I O N

Why secure email?

The number of "whaling" attacks through company email systems is on the increase. Lenny Wood
from Frama UK asks if you're doing everything you can to keep your information and profits safe?

ore and more companies
are becoming aware of the
pressing need to increase
the security of their digital
communication systems. There has
been a huge increase in attacks on email
communication in recent years, leading
to the loss of sensitive information,
client and company funds and the
reputation of countless companies.
The UK government released
these startling figures in 2018:
* 43% of businesses identified security
breaches in last 12 months
* 75% of employees across all businesses
received one or more fraudulent emails
* 28% of employees across all businesses
were being impersonated online
* 24% of businesses experienced
a virus or malware attack
Even more worrisome is that only 20% of
businesses believe they have the relevant
tools and training to deal with this threat.

The risks of using
standard email

Highly trained, highly motivated
cyber-criminals are targeting businesses
and helping themselves to millions of
pounds via spoofed email messages.
These messages target finance staff,
encouraging them to expedite a
payment to a supplier that the managing
director or chief executive cannot
due to being away from the office.
This new phenomenon has been
dubbed "whaling" as the mark is
one large target, as opposed to
"phishing" which looks to defraud a
larger number of smaller targets.
The attacker is able to intercept
emails between companies and read

their content. Over many weeks or
even months, the attacker learns how
to impersonate the style and language
of those sending and receiving the
emails. The attacker is then able to
send a bogus request for money,
including new bank account details
for the transfer. As the attacker
has lots of information about the
target, the request will appear to
be genuine and money is very often
transferred to the attackers account.
According to a 2018 report by
Symantec, the average user receives
16 malicious spam emails per month.
Even if a business only has 20
employees, that is 320 attacks per
month. Businesses often trust in their
employee's ability to scrutinize emails
and make the right decision whether
to open them or not. That amounts to
3,840 bullets to dodge every year.
An attacker is able to successfully
infiltrate a target as standard email
has no way to verify the email address
of a sender or recipient. This means
that the displayed "to" or "from"
name actually has no relation to
the email address behind it.

Financial consequences

Many medium and large companies have
been targeted by these attackers, with
unwitting CFO's and finance leaders
losing more than £9.1bn between them
since 2013. Snapchat is the latest highprofile victim, revealing employee payroll
information to an unknown attacker.
As with any scam of this type, the
goal of whaling is to trick someone in
to disclosing personal or corporate
information through various methods,
most typically email correspondence.

YOUR BUSINESS SPRING 2019

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