Safeguarding Against Business Email Compromise

A Request From the Boss

Samantha is checking her messages Friday morning when an email comes in from her boss. He tells her that a vendor, Glivy, has asked the company to update its bank account information for an upcoming invoice payment. He then asks Samantha, who is the company’s head of finance, to take care of it right away.

Samantha updates the new account information and pays the invoice for good measure. She doesn’t think much about it until the following week—when Glivy calls to ask about an unpaid invoice. 

After some back-and-forth, Samantha, Glivy, and her boss figure out what happened: Samantha’s been duped. Her boss never sent that email, and now they’ve transferred funds to an impersonator’s account.