For as long as companies have used internet applications, private and publicly owned businesses, law firms and other professional services organizations, and even public entities have faced potentially devastating financial harm and loss of public good will from “business email compromise” (BEC) fraud.

A recent report by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found that BEC fraud was the crime that resulted in the highest reported losses. The IC3 indicated that, in 2019 alone, it received 23,775 BEC/email account compromise complaints, with adjusted losses of over $1.7 billion. See “2019 Internet Crime Report.” Moreover, the IC3 has found that losses from BEC scams overall have increased every year since it began tracking it in 2013. See “Cyber Criminals Conduct Business Email Compromise Through Exploitation of Cloud-Based Email Services, Costing US Businesses More Than $2 Billion,” (defining cloud-based email services as hosted subscription services that enable users to conduct business via tools such as email, shared calendars, online file storage, and instant messaging.)