In 2019, Business Email Compromise (BEC) maintained its rankings as both the most profitable and the most prominent threat facing our customers. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which recently released its annual report, US$1.77 billion in losses were attributed to BEC attacks over the course of 2019. This number dwarfed losses associated with romance scams, identity theft, credit card fraud, phishing, and ransomware combined over the same period.
With cases reported across all 50 states and in 177 countries, the FBI also published a press release in September 2019 announcing that in the preceding three-year period, BEC losses eclipsed US$26 billion globally. Put into perspective, the known and reported losses associated with this threat now exceed the estimated global losses from WannaCry (an estimated US$4 billion) and NotPetya (an estimated US$10 billion) combined.
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Source: Palo Alto