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The financial industry has seen a 137% rise in Vendor Email Compromise attacks in the past year, according to new data from Abnormal Security.
Most threats came from email attacks that tricked people, with the sector getting 200 advanced attacks per week for every 1000 mailboxes.
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Last year, there were peak attack periods in late January, late September, and mid-December.
VEC is when bad actors pretend to be business providers, like suppliers or vendors, to trick financial transfers. These attacks are hard to spot because they seem real and can cause big financial losses for organizations.
Abnormal Security recently published a report on VEC attacks. The report mentions that millions of dollars have been targeted, including a shocking case where $36m was involved.
An example in the document showed how a $1.4m VEC attack was carried out against an Australian financial company. The attacker used legitimate communication patterns and invoices to change banking details in an innocent-looking email.
The financial services industry saw a 71% increase in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks in 2023. These attacks involved cybercriminals pretending to be executives or employees to commit payroll or banking fraud.
BEC attacks can trick traditional security tools using social engineering, even without harmful links or attachments. Last year, the median open rate for text-based BEC attacks was almost 28%, showing how effective these tactics can be.
The firm says that these attacks are very sophisticated. They are able to trick security systems and people because they look real and make small changes to avoid detection.
“If these trends continue, organizations in the financial services industry should prepare for the increasing frequency of email-based attacks targeting human fallibility,” the company wrote.
“While VEC, BEC, and scams can often circumvent traditional security solutions, organizations are meeting the challenges presented by sophisticated email attacks head-on by adopting sophisticated cloud email security.”
