How to Prevent BEC Attacks
Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks don’t break into systems. They exploit trust. Attackers impersonate executives, colleagues, or vendors to convince employees to transfer money or share sensitive information. There is often no malware, no suspicious links, just a convincing email.
This guide covers eight practical strategies to strengthen your BEC prevention strategy and defend against BEC before it causes damage.
Key Takeaways
- Always verify high-value payment requests through a separate communication channel, such as a known phone number, not the one in the email, before approving any transfer.
- Set up email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM and DMARC. This can help protect from domain spoofing and email impersonation.
- Turn on MFA and train your team often.
- Improve payment approval processes and use tools like Diopter to detect AI-powered impersonation in voice and video communications.
Why Preventing BEC Requires More Than Email Security
Most organizations rely on email filters to stop threats. BEC attackers know this. Instead of sending malware or malicious attachments, they rely on impersonation and social engineering to make fraudulent requests appear legitimate. As a result, these emails can easily bypass traditional security tools.
Microsoft’s Email Threat Landscape report for Q1 2026 recorded around 10.7 million BEC attacks in just three months, with a 26% surge in March. The FBI’s IC3 report shows BEC has caused over $55 billion in global losses between 2013 and 2023. The Arctic Wolf 2025 Threat Report also found that BEC accounted for 27% of all incident response cases in 2024.
Attackers are increasingly using AI to create more convincing emails and impersonation attempts. Hence, a business email compromise protection strategy requires layered defenses across people, process and technology.
8 Practical Strategies to Prevent BEC Attacks
Verify High-Risk Requests Using a Second Channel
What it is: One of the simplest ways to prevent a BEC attack is to verify sensitive requests through a separate communication channel instead of replying to the same email thread.
Why it matters: If an attacker has already compromised an email account, they can control that conversation. Verifying the request independently helps confirm whether it is genuine.
How to implement: Require all wire transfers, payroll updates, or vendor bank changes to be confirmed by phone before any action is taken. Tell employees to call back using numbers from your company’s own directory, never from the email. This one step can stop a BEC attack before money is transferred based on the information shared.
Strengthen Email Authentication
What it is: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are email authentication protocols that reduce domain spoofing.
Why it matters: These protocols make it harder for attackers to spoof your company’s email address and impersonate trusted employees or executives. While they cannot stop every BEC attack, they can still provide a layer of protection.
How to implement: SPF specifies which mail servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain. DKIM adds a digital signature to outgoing emails so recipients can verify that the content hasn’t been altered. DMARC builds on these by instructing receiving servers how to handle emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks. These three protocols together form a core layer of business email compromise protection.
Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
What it is: Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires users to verify their identity using a second authentication factor in addition to a password.
Why it matters: According to Arctic Wolf, phishing was responsible for 73.5% of BEC incidents in 2024. The attackers can send fraudulent requests that appear completely legitimate.
How to implement: Enable MFA on all business accounts, starting with finance, HR and executives. Wherever possible, use phishing-resistant authentication methods such as passkeys or hardware security keys for stronger protection.
Train Employees
What it is: Employee training is important to help them recognize and respond to BEC attempts.
Why it matters: These attacks depend on human trust and not on technical vulnerabilities. Attackers may create urgency or exploit familiar business processes to pressure employees into acting without much thinking.
How to implement: Teach employees to verify urgent payment requests and question instructions that bypass already set approval procedures. Also, update their training regularly.
Establish Secure Payment Approval Workflows
What it is: Secure payment approval workflows require multiple verification steps before high-value payments or account changes are approved.
Why it matters: This reduces the risk of a single employee unknowingly authorizing a fraudulent transaction. Even if one person is targeted, additional approval requirements make it much harder for attackers to succeed.
How to implement: Verify any request independently, whether it’s a change to vendor banking details or a new payment initiation. These controls strengthen your overall BEC prevention strategy.
Limit Access to Sensitive Financial Information
What it is: Limiting access to sensitive financial information ensures employees only have access to the systems and data they need to perform their jobs.
Why it matters: If an attacker compromises one account, restricted access limits how much information they can view.
How to implement: Apply the principle of least privilege. Employees should only access the financial systems, data and tools required for their specific role. Regularly check permissions and remove any access that is no longer needed.
Monitor for Look-Alike Domains and Account Changes
What it is: Look-alike domain monitoring helps identify websites and email domains that closely resemble your organization’s domain.
Why it matters: Attackers register domains that closely look like yours or your vendors’ domain and then use them as an attack.
How to implement: Use domain monitoring tools and configure alerts for unusual login activity, unexpected email forwarding rules, etc.
Use AI-Powered Security Tools
What it is: AI-powered security tools analyze communication patterns to identify suspicious behavior that traditional security tools may overlook.
Why it matters: These tools can detect unusual request tone, atypical sending hours and financial requests from accounts that rarely send such messages. Combined with identity monitoring and real-time threat data, they add a layer to your anti-BEC security stack that reactive tools cannot provide.
How to implement: Deploy AI-powered tools that can identify unusual communication patterns, identity monitoring and real-time threat intelligence to add another layer of protection.
Strengthen your defenses against AI-powered BEC attacks
How Diopter Strengthens Anti-BEC Security
Traditional email security controls help protect against many text-based Business Email Compromise attacks. However, attackers are increasingly using AI-generated voices and deepfake video to impersonate trusted individuals during high-risk conversations. Diopter is designed to help detect these threats in real time.
| Challenge Businesses Face | How Diopter Helps |
|---|---|
| Cloned executive voices used to approve wire transfers | Detects synthetic audio drift live during the call |
| Deepfake video calls used to bypass visual identity checks | Scores each video participant for synthetic media in real time |
| High-pressure tactics that compress verification time | Monitors conversation arc for urgency, isolation, and escalation signals |
| Vendor impersonation leading to payment redirects | Flags suspicious changes to payment or account details before funds move |
| Help desk manipulation to reset credentials or access | Catches social engineering patterns targeting IT and support agents |
Conclusion
BEC continues to evolve as attackers use AI-generated emails, clone voices on live calls and deepfake videos. Reducing the risk requires more than email security alone. Strong email authentication, secure payment approval workflows, employee training, and independent verification all play an important role in preventing BEC attacks.
As organizations increasingly rely on voice and video for high-risk approvals, adding solutions like Diopter can provide another layer of business email compromise protection, especially against AI-powered impersonation and social engineering.
FAQs
What is the first thing employees should do if they suspect a Business Email Compromise attempt?
Do not respond to such email or take any action it requests. Instead, report the message to your IT team immediately. If the email involves a payment request, notify the finance team as well. Ensure to preserve the original email without forwarding it.
How often should organizations review their Business Email Compromise prevention strategy?
Organizations should review their BEC prevention strategy after any major security incident or organizational change. Regular reviews help ensure security controls remain effective against evolving BEC threats.
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