Fraudulent — or phishing — emails sent by criminals have become more sophisticated, as the recent spate of attempts to defraud companies with well-crafted, believable messages apparently sent by travelling or absent chief executives has shown.
Etienne Greeff, head of UK-based cyber security firm SecureData Europe, says chief executive scams — known as “whale phishing” — became a problem in 2015. They were unsophisticated to start with, but as the year progressed they drastically improved. The FBI reported a 270 per cent rise in global losses from such frauds between January and August last year and says there were more than 12,000 victims. The average loss was around $120,000, while some companies lost up to $90m.
“Something from the chief saying it needs your immediate response is going to be a priority,” says David Emm, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, an online security company.