BEC Susceptibility
BEC Susceptibility (Business Email Compromise Susceptibility) in cybersecurity refers to the quantifiable likelihood that an organization will be successfully targeted and defrauded by a Business Email Compromise attack. It is the measure of an organization's vulnerability to attacks in which an adversary fraudulently impersonates a company executive, vendor, or customer via email to induce a financial transfer or the sharing of sensitive data.
Key Components of Susceptibility
Susceptibility is determined by analyzing several factors that reveal an organization's defense posture against email-based social engineering and fraud:
Email Authentication Weakness: The primary technical factor is the absence or misconfiguration of email security protocols like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM. A lack of these records makes the organization's email domain easy for an attacker to spoof, allowing fraudulent emails to bypass standard email filters.
Human Visibility and Training: This assesses the human attack surface, specifically the ease with which an attacker can harvest employee names and craft believable phishing lures. It includes:
Email Format Guessability: If the company uses a simple, predictable email naming convention (e.g., firstname.lastname@company.com), it is highly susceptible, as attackers can easily generate valid employee email addresses for targeted spear-phishing.
Compromised Credentials: Exposed employee usernames and passwords on the dark web increase susceptibility, as these credentials can be used for account takeover (ATO) to send BEC emails from a legitimate but compromised internal account.
Brand Impersonation Infrastructure: This involves the proactive defense of the brand's name. Suppose an organization fails to secure typographical variations of its domain (typosquatting). In that case, it remains highly susceptible, as attackers will use these look-alike domains to host convincing phishing sites or send fraudulent emails that mimic the legitimate brand.
Consequences
High BEC Susceptibility directly correlates with the risk of significant financial loss from fraudulent wire transfers, exposure of tax information (W-2 fraud), and severe reputational damage to the brand. Reducing susceptibility requires an integrated approach that strengthens both technical email authentication and human awareness.
ThreatNG directly helps mitigate BEC Susceptibility by addressing both technical weaknesses (email authentication flaws) and human attack-surface exposures (impersonation, harvesting, compromised credentials) that attackers exploit to launch Business Email Compromise campaigns. ThreatNG provides the necessary external, unauthenticated visibility to quantify and proactively neutralize these BEC risks.
ThreatNG's Role in BEC Susceptibility Reduction
External Discovery
ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery with no connectors, which is essential for mapping the external BEC threat landscape, including email domain weaknesses and impersonation infrastructure.
Example of ThreatNG Helping: An attacker's initial step in BEC is often to set up a fraudulent email domain. ThreatNG's discovery process identifies the organization's legitimate domain and all associated Web3 Domains, ensuring the organization knows all the digital assets that need protection against spoofing.
External Assessment
ThreatNG's BEC Susceptibility Security Rating serves as the core metric for quantifying this risk, guiding defense strategy by prioritizing the most critical failures.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility Security Rating (A-F): This rating is the primary tool, based on critical findings that enable BEC:
Domain Name Record Analysis (including missing DMARC and SPF records):
Example in Detail: ThreatNG assesses the organization's domain and finds missing DMARC and SPF records. This immediately quantifies the technical BEC susceptibility with a poor rating (e.g., "F"). The lack of these records allows an attacker to successfully spoof the company’s official email address (e.g., CEO@company.com), which is the primary mechanism for BEC fraud.
Domain Name Permutations (available and taken):
Example in Detail: ThreatNG discovers a typo-squatting permutation, such as c0mpany.com, that is already taken and configured with a Mail Record. This confirms an active BEC staging effort (Brand Impersonation) and mandates immediate takedown action against the fraudulent email infrastructure.
Compromised Credentials (Dark Web Presence):
Example in Detail: ThreatNG identifies a batch of employee credentials associated with the Finance department's email addresses. This exposure means the attacker can launch a BEC attack by taking over a legitimate internal email account rather than spoofing one, which is a higher-impact threat. The poor rating mandates preemptive password resets to neutralize the threat.
Reporting
ThreatNG's reporting ensures that the time-sensitive nature of BEC threats is communicated and acted upon immediately.
Reporting (Executive, Prioritized): The Executive reports provide a concise view of the BEC Susceptibility rating, while the Prioritized reports ensure that high-risk precursor activities (like a newly registered fraudulent domain with a mail record) are surfaced with maximum urgency, enabling a rapid response to neutralize the threat infrastructure.
Continuous Monitoring
Continuous Monitoring of the external attack surface ensures that new BEC threats, which often arise from quick domain registrations, are detected immediately.
Example of ThreatNG Helping: Continuous monitoring tracks all high-risk domain permutations. If a malicious third party registers a new look-alike domain (e.g., company-wire.com), continuous monitoring detects the registration instantly, triggering an alert for immediate defensive action before a fraudulent BEC email can be sent.
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG's modules provide the specific tools to investigate and confirm the elements that contribute to BEC Susceptibility.
Domain Intelligence / Domain Record Analysis: This confirms the status of email security controls.
Example in Detail: An analyst uses the Domain Record Analysis module to audit the organization's main domain and confirm the actual state of its DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records. This provides the evidence needed to remediate the technical flaw that allows for email spoofing.
Domain Intelligence / Domain Name Permutations: This module is essential for identifying the fraudulent infrastructure.
Example in Detail: An analyst uses this module to discover that the bitsquatting permutation of the brand is currently available. This allows the organization to perform a Defensive Domain Registration of that asset, preventing an attacker from using it to stage a future BEC campaign.
Email Intelligence: This module reports on Email Format Predictions and Harvested Emails.
Example in Detail: This confirms the organization's Email Format Guessability, a critical component of BEC susceptibility, which an attacker uses to validate employee emails for targeted spear-phishing attempts.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
ThreatNG's repositories provide the raw, external data that confirms the highest-risk BEC precursor activity.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): This repository is the source of truth for measuring the volume of employee identities compromised via dark web leaks. A high number of compromised credentials is a direct precursor to an account takeover BEC attack.
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web): This monitors for organizational mentions and associated ransomware events.
Example of ThreatNG Helping: ThreatNG discovers chatter on a dark web forum discussing the sale of an email list specifically for launching a "vendor invoice fraud" BEC attack against the target company's industry, providing early warning of the threat actor's intent.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's BEC susceptibility intelligence can be integrated with other platforms to automate remediation, ensuring rapid risk reduction.
Cooperation with Email Security Solutions: When ThreatNG's assessment flags missing DMARC and SPF records, this finding can be sent to a complementary Email Security Solution. This platform can automatically guide the security team through the configuration process to implement the records, effectively closing the technical BEC initial access vector.
Cooperation with Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: When ThreatNG detects a domain permutation that has been taken, this precursor intelligence can be fed to a complementary SOAR Platform. The SOAR can automate the entire takedown playbook, instantly submitting the fraudulent domain for blacklisting and legal action, neutralizing the BEC infrastructure before the attack is fully launched.
