Symantec Honored for its Collaboration With Leading Industry Group to Protect Against Business Email Compromise Scams

Loading...
Loading...

The annual M3AAWG JD Falk Award recognizes community-oriented, volunteer-based projects that use innovation to protect online users

Symantec Corp. SYMC, the world's leading cyber security company, announced it has been recognized alongside other participating organizations and researchers for its work with the Business Email Compromise (BEC) List as a recipient of the annual 2018 JD Falk Award from the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG). The JD Falk Award honors an outstanding innovative project that protects internet security and embodies the spirit of volunteerism and community building.

The BEC List is a private, under the radar email group comprised of more than 500 professionals across the cyber security industry, Fortune 500 companies, law enforcement, and government that protect against Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, which use highly targeted phishing emails to request the wire transfer of funds to a fraudulent account. According to the FBI, these types of attacks account for more than $12 billion in losses globally and threaten users in 150 countries.

Since December 2015, Symantec has shared information and expertise about BEC-related cyber crime activity with organizations on the BEC List in an effort to aid law enforcement. In June, a joint effort across private sector companies and international law enforcement agencies led to the arrest of 74 individuals as part of Operation WireWire.

"Sophisticated BEC attacks continue to plague organizations. In 2017, we identified 7,700 distinct organizations that were targeted by BEC scams an average of 4.7 times," said Chris Larsen, Architect, WebPulse Threat Research Lab at Symantec. "We're honored to be recognized among the other participants in the BEC List for our collective effort to protect customers from phishing attacks."

BEC scams are carefully crafted and highly targeted. The attackers behind such scams carefully research their targets and organizations beforehand, using language that would illicit a high-ranking employee to make a wire transfer. BEC scammers commonly use spoofed domains and free email accounts that resemble that of the organization to lure in victims.

Symantec identifies tens of thousands of malicious and spoofed websites each day, while working to protect customers against attacks and compromises from visiting phishing websites. Recently, Symantec launched a free service, powered by the company's proprietary artificial intelligence technology, that can be used to test the security and authenticity of websites. Using Symantec's massive telemetry, the AI-driven technology analyzes websites and then notifies an organization if a spoofed version of a legitimate site is discovered. The free service is available now at https://go.symantec.com/spoofproof-security. Symantec also recently announced the introduction of its Business Email Scam Analyzer for Symantec Email Security, allowing customers to identify BEC scam emails.

To learn more about the M3AAWG, please visit www.m3aawg.org.

About Symantec

Symantec Corporation SYMC, the world's leading cyber security company, helps organizations, governments and people secure their most important data wherever it lives. Organizations across the world look to Symantec for strategic, integrated solutions to defend against sophisticated attacks across endpoints, cloud and infrastructure. Likewise, a global community of more than 50 million people and families rely on Symantec's Norton and LifeLock product suites to protect their digital lives at home and across their devices. Symantec operates one of the world's largest civilian cyber intelligence networks, allowing it to see and protect against the most advanced threats. For additional information, please visit www.symantec.com or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Loading...
Loading...
Posted In: Press Releases
Benzinga simplifies the market for smarter investing

Trade confidently with insights and alerts from analyst ratings, free reports and breaking news that affects the stocks you care about.

Join Now: Free!

Loading...