KnowBe4 Observes Increase in CEO Fraud

Bad guys are now requesting personal cell phone numbers of employees

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Sep 14, 2018, 10:28 ET

TAMPA BAY, Fla., Sept. 14, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- KnowBe4, the world's largest provider of security awareness training and simulated phishing, announced that it is observing a serious escalation in CEO fraud, (aka Business Email Compromise/Email Account Compromise), with the volume nearly tripling in the past month. This escalation is detected through phishing attempts reported globally via KnowBe4's Phish Alert Button (PAB).

PAB enables users to identify and send suspected phishing emails to IT or their incident response team for follow up with one simple click. More and more spear phishing emails that appear to come from the CEO directed at employees within organizations are being detected and KnowBe4 has noticed a significant increase just in the past month. The bad guys are crafting emails requesting more personal information, including street addresses and personal phone numbers of employees.

According to the FBI, the BEC/EAC scam continues to grow and evolve, targeting small, medium, and large business and personal transactions. The FBI issued alert of July 18, 2018 FBI Alert (PSA 1-071218-PSA) noted there were 78,617 incidents reported with exposed dollar loss of over $12.5 billion dollars. Business email compromise was also identified as the most common type of crime in terms of dollar loss. These numbers and KnowBe4's detection of the significant increase in CEO Fraud demonstrate why it's more important than ever to step employees through new-school security awareness training, as they are an organization's last line of defense.

"It's already known that CEO fraud is becoming one of the more popular and successful types of phishing attacks," said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4. "The escalation we've seen at through the attempts we track via KnowBe4's Phish Alert Button indicates that the bad guys are increasingly confident in their ability to use social engineering and work over targets in a much more up-close and personal fashion."

About KnowBe4
KnowBe4, the provider of the world's largest integrated security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by more than 20,000 organizations worldwide. Founded by data and IT security expert Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 helps organizations address the human element of security by raising awareness of ransomware, CEO fraud and other social engineering tactics through a new-school approach to security awareness training. Kevin Mitnick, internationally recognized computer security expert and KnowBe4's Chief Hacking Officer, helped design KnowBe4's training based on his well-documented social engineering tactics. Tens of thousands of organizations worldwide trust KnowBe4 to mobilize their employees as their last line of defense.

Number 96 on the 2018 Inc. 500 list, #70 on 2017 Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 and #2 in Cybersecurity Ventures Cybersecurity 500. KnowBe4 is headquartered in Tampa Bay, Florida with European offices in England, the Netherlands, Germany and offices in South Africa and Singapore.

CONTACT:
Amanda Tarantino
(727)748-4221
[email protected]

SOURCE KnowBe4