Spot It, Stop It, Survive It

One unexpected email. One urgent request. One click. That’s all it takes for a Business Email Compromise, or simply BEC, to unfod. BEC scams slip quietly into your inbox, often disguised as messages from a trusted colleague, vendor, or even your CEO. The attacker isn’t just after access—they’re after action. A rushed wire transfer, a changed invoice, or a leaked credential. 

The good news? BECs aren’t unstoppable—not if you’re ready. Instead of waiting for a BEC attack to strike, proactive threat detection and response can spot suspicious behavior the moment it starts. Modern email security solutions swiftly isolate threats, block malicious activity, and alert the right people before real damage is done.

After reading this article, you’ll learn:

• Real-world business email compromise examples that show how a BEC scam happens 
• How a BEC operator impersonates an account to get access to sensitive information
• The red flags to watch out for—and how to spot them early 
• How our defenders’ team operates to prevent email compromise and provide real-time defense.

What Is BEC and Why Attackers Love It 

So, what is business email compromise? It’s a type of cyberattack where a threat actor uses a compromised or spoofed email account to impersonate a trusted contact to trick someone into transferring money or sharing sensitive information. A BEC email is highly targeted, personalized, and often contains no malicious links, making it harder to detect and more damaging when successful.

A business email compromise scam has become one of the most widespread and financially harmful cyber threats today. Here’s why:

• BEC fraud doesn’t require breaching systems or writing complex code. 
• Because BEC attacks rely on social engineering, their threat detection rate is quite low. 
• Global scalability allows attackers to run BEC operations from anywhere in the world—no infrastructure needed.

What makes a business email compromise attack especially dangerous is that it doesn’t go after systems—it targets people. BEC phishing campaigns manipulate our human nature and emotions like urgency, authority, and trust. By impersonating executives, vendors, or colleagues, BEC operators trick recipients into taking action: transferring funds, sharing credentials, or updating payment details. 

Notorious BEC Scams That Stole Millions

Here are several high-profile real-world BEC cases where famous brands and organizations were deceived, and millions were lost:

1.Facebook and Google—$121 million 

A fake company, Quanta, was a legitimate hardware vendor used by both Google and Facebook. Posing as Quanta, fraudsters sent simulated invoices and bogus contracts. Both companies wired approximately $121 million before the scheme was discovered. 

2. Ubiquiti Networks—$46.7 million

The attackers impersonated Ubiquiti executives, sending wire instructions to the Hong Kong finance team. Over 17 days, the company wired $46.7 million to overseas accounts. Investigations revealed no hacking of systems—only deceptive emails. 

3. Toyota Boshoku—$37 million

Toyota Boshoku, a major auto-parts supplier, fell victim to BEC when fraudsters impersonated a senior executive and a trusted vendor. They tricked finance staff into wiring roughly $37 million to fake accounts.  

And the list goes on…

How One Click Sets Off a BEC Attack Trap

Consider the story of Bradley—someone who, like many others, was caught off guard by a business email compromise. What followed could’ve turned into a disaster—if not for what happened next.

Bradley is a seasoned pro in the finance department. If there’s anyone who knows how things work, that’s him—and if something feels off, he’s usually the first to spot it.

It’s the end-of-quarter bonus time. Bradley is waiting for an email from one of the company’s accountants, someone he knows and trusts. When he finally receives that email, it looks completely legitimate. The sender’s name is familiar. The subject line reads Quarterly Bonus Approval 2025—exactly the kind of update he’s expecting. He doesn’t think twice and clicks to open it.

To give you a clear picture of how a BEC unfolds, we’ve created a demo featuring a business email compromise example. In this demo, we’ll switch between Bradley’s screen, the attacker’s view, and the defender’s interface, so you can follow the attack in real time and see how threat detection and incident response work within a customer environment.

Let’s jump to the attacker’s screen. Nothing looks suspicious yet. But on Bradley’s side, a prompt appears, asking for his login credentials to view a file.

BEC actors are built for stealth. They might hijack a real account or spoof a trusted sender using a convincing domain. Their messages feel familiar, urgent, or routine—just enough to slip past filters and raise no flags. Bradley enters his credentials, unaware they’re being captured—username, password, session tokens, even cookies.

Seconds later, the attacker logs in as Bradley. No alerts, no red flags—just quiet, full access to his inbox. From there, it escalates: email forwarding, sensitive data theft, or internal phishing. The attacker blends in, pivots, and spreads—one inbox at a time.

First Steps: Building a Culture of Email Security Awareness

At the organizational level, there are key lessons to be learned and particular changes that must be implemented to prevent business email compromise.

However, following email security best practices is only one piece of the puzzle—and on its own, it can’t guarantee complete protection. This is where advanced email security technology makes a difference, but not all solutions are created equal.

A widely used Microsoft Defender, offering valuable insights and a broad range of built-in rules and policies, is often not enough for stopping fast-moving threats like business email compromise. While all the right modules may be activated, alerts can be significantly delayed, sometimes by 10 hours or more. That kind of lag gives attackers a huge head start and underscores a critical point: out-of-the-box protections from Microsoft Defender are helpful, but they shouldn’t be your only line of defense.

So, what else can you do to protect against business email compromises?

How to Prevent Business Email Compromise?

An efficient and actionable way to handle ongoing BEC attacks—and steer clear of them in the future—is a three-stage approach that detects malicious activity early, disrupts attack progression, and strengthens long-term defenses.

Stage 1: Expert-led threat detection

Top threat detection tools are at your disposal, offering advanced visibility, real-time alerts, and faster threat response to help you strengthen business email compromise prevention. But email security software alone isn’t enough—without the right expertise behind the dashboard, even the most advanced threat detection systems can miss critical email security issues.

The real business email compromise protection comes when you partner with a trusted security provider who knows how to use threat detection solutions to identify BECs faster, respond more effectively, and minimize their impact before it spreads. At the same time, your cyber threat detection solution should support these essential steps of the BEC security process. 

1. Use a clear dashboard that integrates your accounts and infrastructure, tracking incident response times along with cost and time savings. 
2. Run threat response actions—like on-demand hunts—by uploading BEC phishing emails, spoofed domains, or suspicious files for threat analysis. 
3. Track the alert processing flow with full context—severity, status, AI-driven insights, potential impact, and recommended actions—to support fast threat mitigation.
4. Show the full lifecycle of the alert—from threat detection and alert triage to the final verdict, including the SOC analyst’s reasoning. 

One of the options for such a solution is the UnderDefense MAXI portal that our SOC team uses to manage your BEC cybersecurity. Watch this short overview of how our platform can equip you with efficient BEC protection.

Stage 2: Regaining control of your business email security

Once cyber threat analysts detect a business email compromise, they take a series of next steps to trace the BEC attack, review the incident, and assess the impact. 

1.Incident triage

The analysts begin triage with a detailed view of raw data, including timestamps, forwarding activity, and the source country. This context helps analysts piece together what happened and what actions need to be taken.

So, we check Bradley’s connection status over the past 24 hours. The login activity shows who accessed the account, from where, and what actions were taken. There’s a clear contrast—normally, Bradley logs in from Frankfurt, Germany, but this time we see a few atypical logins from Sydney, Australia. We can also check account activity—one sent email, one created item, and a couple of “mail item accessed” events—all helping you assess the scope of email compromise.

2. Automated incident response

Using incident response automation, you disable Bradley’s account in seconds to prevent further damage and buy time for a deeper investigation. We know he sent out an email or file, but what exactly was it, and did anyone open it? Speed is critical here, and automated incident response helps us stay ahead of attackers who are constantly evolving their tactics. 

By pulling data on the message sent from Bradley’s account, we can quickly determine if it’s been opened. If there’s any sign of suspicious activity, we can immediately block or delete the email to prevent further impact.

Now, what if Bradley wasn’t the only one affected? What if other employees also fell for this BEC scam?

3. Incident investigation

Using the Microsoft portal, the threat analyst examines the sender and recipient details of the BEC phishing email from Dean Billings, a known malicious actor. It turns out two users received the message: Bradley, whose account is already disabled, and Jerry. Reviewing Jerry’s activity shows no suspicious logins or exchange actions—everything appears normal and originates from Germany. While Jerry seems unaffected, we’ll still monitor his activity closely for the next 7–10 business days to ensure nothing was missed.

4. Incident analysis and mitigation

It’s crucial to keep both analysts and clients informed; that’s why updates should be regularly sent to the system. Even after containment, continuous incident investigation is essential. The case is escalated for deeper threat hunting to uncover how the data was leaked, assess the SOC team’s response, and identify steps to prevent future incidents. User behavior analytics can also flag unusual activity, enabling a threat intelligence analyst to investigate quickly and make their verdicts.

Let’s see how we handle post-incident actions—from uncovering the root cause to recommending action items and ensuring your email security is back on solid ground.

Stage 3: Next steps after the all-clear following the BEC attack

Now that we have fully documented the BEC scam incident, your security team gets a clear, up-to-date picture of what happened, how it was handled, and what could be done to safeguard against BEC attacks in the future.

For example, if your company has no operations or travel involving Australia, you can block login attempts originating from that region. Or once you detect suspicious patterns—such as unreal travel, unexpected changes to email forwarding rules, or unauthorized app installations—you can stop malicious activity early, especially when attackers try to disable or tamper with your systems.

Now, back to the attacker’s screen—access is blocked, the account is locked, and their attempt to move within the domain is over. So much for the business email compromise attack. Watch its epic downfall in action.

Your Email Security Made Smarter With MDR Expertise

With business email compromise attacks and other email security risks on the rise, too much is at stake—your business, reputation, and customers’ trust. Chances are, a few suspicious messages have already landed in your inbox as you’re reading this. That’s why advanced email security is critical, and Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is what enables it, delivering the highest level of threat protection for your organization. 

Managed email security removes the overhead of in-house threat monitoring and response and gives you the best email security technology, capabilities, and expertise to detect, contain, and neutralize BEC attacks before they cause damage. The MDR price depends on the cybersecurity provider, your digital ecosystem, and the level of detection and response required.

With UnderDefense MDR, you get real-time monitoring that never sleeps, maximum visibility, unlimited investigations, 24/7 incident response, and ongoing protection support from our experts. Our approach is tailored to your specific security needs and works seamlessly with your existing tools. The UnderDefense team is always on standby, ready to step in, investigate, contain, and guide you through any cyber threat—so you’re never facing risk alone. Let’s connect!