Problems We Solve
Business Email Compromise and Wire Fraud Schemes
The Challenge
Business email compromise occurs when an attacker gains access to, or convincingly impersonates, a legitimate business email account to trick an employee into transferring money or sensitive information. A common version involves a spoofed or compromised executive account sending an urgent request to accounting staff to wire funds to a new account, or a fake vendor email asking to update payment details before an invoice is paid. Because these messages often mimic real communication patterns and arrive at a plausible moment, such as during a known transaction, they can be difficult to distinguish from a legitimate request without a verification step in place.
Why This Happens
These schemes work because they exploit trust and normal business processes rather than a technical weakness. Attackers research a company's vendors, executives, and typical payment patterns using publicly available information, then time their request to align with real business activity. Email spoofing and lookalike domains make it easy to impersonate a trusted sender convincingly, especially without email authentication protections in place. Financial approval processes that rely solely on an email request, without a separate verification step such as a phone call to a known number, leave little to catch a fraudulent request before funds are sent. Employees under pressure to respond quickly to executives are less likely to question an urgent request.
The Risk to Your Business
Funds sent through a wire transfer are difficult to recover once a fraudulent transaction is discovered, since transfers typically move quickly between accounts and across banks. Beyond the direct financial loss, a successful business email compromise incident can expose sensitive vendor and customer information if the attacker had ongoing access to an email account. It can also damage relationships with vendors or partners if their name was used to carry out the fraud, and it can undermine internal confidence in financial processes that were previously trusted without question. Businesses of any size can be targeted, since these schemes rely on impersonation rather than a specific level of technical sophistication.
How Cobham Tech Solves It
Cobham Tech helps businesses put safeguards in place that make business email compromise harder to execute and easier to catch. We configure email authentication protocols that reduce the chance of a spoofed domain reaching an inbox, and we monitor for account activity that suggests unauthorized access. Alongside these technical controls, we help establish verification procedures for financial requests, such as confirming wire transfer changes through a separate, trusted communication channel before funds move. We also train staff to recognize the signs of a spoofed or compromised email, including subtle changes in sender addresses or unusual urgency. Together, these measures address both the technical and procedural gaps that these schemes exploit.
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