How email security vulnerabilities help criminals commit wire fraud

There was a common saying retired agent Holly Hubert had while working in the FBI: It’s not a question of if but when.

“The biggest part of the wire fraud crime problem, right here right now, is around business emails being compromised,” she says. “But a significant number of email accounts are compromised without us ever knowing.”

That’s because businesses don’t often think like a criminal. If a criminal’s goal is to intercept wiring instructions, they could do so with a very simple phishing email.

“Common spam is so good nowadays that it’s often not detectable by busy people,” says Holly, who founded cybersecurity and crisis management consultancy GlobalSecurityIQ after a 25-year career with the FBI. “It’s easy for individuals to move along quickly and click on a link or attachment they shouldn’t click on, and then you have a compromised email box.”

Once cybercriminals gain access, they observe that email box for months and collect intel such as who communicates with whom — and how. That allows them to assume the identity of the sender by speaking and using language like those who own the email account.

For example, a busy attorney emails an admin in another office saying, “Hey, I need your wiring instructions.” The voice and diction in the email is often so similar to how they actually speak that it’s easy for people to be duped.

And when one email is compromised, it’s easier to “hop” to another, which is why businesses often see multiple compromised accounts.

“It doesn’t take much to compromise an email account, because people are busy,” Holly says. “It also doesn’t take much for businesses to implement additional measures of protection.”

WireVault is effective in preventing fraud because it takes the exchange of wiring instructions outside of the email environment — or the internal processes and security protocols that rely on busy people using easily exploitable methods.

By leveraging the full suite of best practices against cybercrime that are available, WireVault makes it effortless to switch to state-of-the-art business practices to implement controls against various threat factors. These best-in-class cybersecurity practices mitigate risk against cybercrime and fraud.

“Criminals are in the business of making money — as much as possible in as short of a time as possible,” Holly says. “If an organization is particularly hardened, they will just move on to the easy target.”