Human Resources Email Accounts

In the context of cybersecurity, Human Resources (HR) email accounts are email addresses used by an organization's HR department to manage employee-related functions, such as recruitment, onboarding, benefits, and internal communications. These accounts can be either for an individual HR professional or a generic email address, such as "hr@company.com".

From a cybersecurity perspective, these accounts are desirable targets for cybercriminals. HR departments handle vast amounts of sensitive and personally identifiable information (PII) of employees, including Social Security numbers, contact details, and financial information. Compromising an HR email account can grant an attacker access to this valuable data, which can then be sold on the dark web or used for identity theft.

A standard attack vector is HR-themed phishing. Cybercriminals leverage the trust that employees place in their HR department by sending emails that appear legitimate and urgent. These emails can cover a variety of topics, including W-2 updates, performance reviews, changes in company policy, or job offers. The emotional manipulation, such as fear of job loss or excitement over a new opportunity, often prompts employees to click on malicious links or download infected attachments without proper scrutiny. These attacks can result in data breaches, malware infections, and significant financial and reputational harm to the organization.

ThreatNG can significantly enhance the security of HR email accounts by providing an external, attacker-centric view of potential risks. Its capabilities help to identify, assess, and monitor exposures that could be used for phishing, BEC, or data theft.

External Discovery and Assessment

ThreatNG's external discovery engine, which does not use connectors, continuously finds publicly exposed email addresses, including those for recruit and talent. Its external assessment capabilities then analyze these findings in great detail.

For example, ThreatNG's Data Leak Susceptibility score uses digital risk intelligence, including the Dark Web Presence and Compromised Credentials modules, to determine if an HR email account has been exposed in a data breach or leak.

• Example: ThreatNG could discover the email recruiting@example.com on a subdomain. It would then check its compromised credential database (DarCache Rupture) to see if that email has been found in a past breach. If it has, the platform would flag a high-risk data leak susceptibility, indicating that an attacker may already have access to the account credentials.

The BEC & Phishing Susceptibility assessment is derived from ThreatNG's Domain Intelligence. This capability provides Email Intelligence, which includes checking for email security presence and format prediction. This can help identify if an HR email address is vulnerable to being spoofed for Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, which constitute a significant threat to HR departments.

• Example: ThreatNG might discover an hr@example.com email address and assess its DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records. If these records are weak or absent, it indicates a high susceptibility to phishing and spoofing, which could be used to trick employees into giving up sensitive information.

Continuous Monitoring and Reporting

ThreatNG offers continuous monitoring of an organization's external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This ensures that as soon as a talent or recruit email address appears on a new public forum, code repository, or in a credential dump, it is flagged immediately, enabling a timely response.

The platform's reporting capabilities offer a clear and prioritized view of these risks. Reports are available in Executive, Technical, and Prioritized formats.

• Example: A prioritized report would list an exposed recruit email found on an archived web page as a medium-risk finding, providing the reasoning and a recommendation to change its password or remove the page from the archive. This helps HR and IT teams focus on the most critical exposures.

Investigation Modules and Intelligence Repositories

ThreatNG's investigation modules offer detailed context about the discovered exposures. The Archived Web Pages module can find emails that were once publicly accessible but have since been removed, helping to uncover forgotten or legacy HR accounts that might still be active and vulnerable. The Search Engine Exploitation module can also find HR-related emails in publicly available files, like robots.txt or security.txt, providing a clear path for attackers to find them.

ThreatNG's intelligence repositories, branded as DarCache, are a key source of threat data.

• DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials) allows ThreatNG to cross-reference any discovered HR email to see if it has been part of a previous data breach.

• DarCache Dark Web continuously tracks the dark web for mentions of the organization, which can reveal if HR emails are being discussed or traded by threat actors.

Complementary Solutions

ThreatNG's external focus can be enhanced by working with complementary solutions to create a more comprehensive defense.

• With a Security Awareness Training Platform: When ThreatNG discovers an exposed hr@example.com email that is vulnerable to phishing, it can trigger an alert that automatically enrolls relevant employees in a targeted phishing simulation or training module. This helps to build employee resilience against attacks that use HR-themed lures.

• With a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Solution: An alert from ThreatNG about an exposed talent email and associated compromised credentials can be used by a complementary DLP solution. The DLP could then monitor for any suspicious data exfiltration attempts from that account, such as a large transfer of employee PII to an external location.

• With a User Behavior Analytics (UBA) Tool: An alert from ThreatNG regarding a compromised recruit email can prompt a UBA tool to monitor that specific account for any anomalous behavior, such as logging in from an unusual location or at an odd time. This helps detect and respond to a potential account takeover before a breach occurs.