Abnormal Security, a leader in protecting large enterprises from Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, today released the Abnormal Security Quarterly BEC Report for Q1 2020. The first in a series of quarterly reports, the Q1 2020 report illustrates trends from actual BEC attacks discovered by Abnormal Security to help inform enterprise security strategy. The report also features a special section on email account compromise and security attack patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, Abnormal Security found that COVID-related attacks increased 436% between the second and third weeks of March 2020, with an average 173% week-over-week increase during the quarter.
Abnormal Security also uncovered a shift from individual to group BEC attacks, with campaigns with more than 10 recipients up 27% compared to Q4 2019. Attackers also adjusted their targets, with attacks on finance employees increasing more than 75% as attacks on C-Suite executives decreased by 37%. This illustrates a trend away from paycheck and engagement fraud and toward payment fraud, specifically invoice fraud attacks, which increased more than 75%.