Ride the Lightning

Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

BEC Overtakes Ransomware and Breaches in Cyber Insurance Claims

September 5, 2019

ZDNet said in a September 2nd post that business email compromise (BEC) has overtaken ransomware and data breaches as the main reason companies filed a cyber insurance claim in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Asia) region last year. Insurance giant AIG said in July that BEC-related insurance filings accounted for nearly a quarter (23%) of all cyber insurance claims the company received in 2018.

Ransomware-related incidents came in in second place, accounting for 18% of all cyber-insurance claims in the EMEA region, followed by claims for data breaches caused by hackers and data breaches caused by employee negligence (e.g. sending data to the wrong person), both with 14%.

All in all, AIG said that cyber insurance claims nearly doubled between 2017 and 2018 and that they received more cyber insurance claims last year than in 2016 and 2017 combined.

The fact that BEC attacks ranked first is no surprise. In April 2019, the FBI said losses caused by BEC (Business Email Compromise) scams doubled in 2018, compared to 2017 figures, and reached a whopping $1.3 billion, based on victim reports received by the agency's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

AIG blamed the recent rise in BEC-related cyber insurance claims on the poor security measures victim companies had in place, such as the use of poor passwords for email accounts, companies not using multi-factor authentication, or the lack of employee training with respect to email-based attacks.

And now that deepfake audios are being used to impersonate people who have the authority to order monies wired, you can bet the numbers will continue to grow!

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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