Brian Krebs, writing in KrebsonSecurity, describes a scam in which criminals use email to impersonate company executives.
The thieves use fake emails to issue bogus payment instructions to finance and accounting staff. This is one example cited in Spoofing the Boss Turns Thieves a Tidy Profit:
In February, con artists made off with a whopping $17.2 million from one of Omaha, Nebraska’s oldest companies — The Scoular Co., an employee-owned commodities trader. According to Omaha.com, an executive with the 800-employee company wired the money in installments last summer to a bank in China after receiving emails ordering him to do so.
Wells Fargo Bank is addressing this problem with information about how to improve internal financial controls.
https://treasuryinsights.wellsfargotreasury.com/
The materials are under the “Fraud Protection” tab.
The core of this scam is deceptive emails. The problem of deceptive emails can be addressed using SP Guard. Users will decide which emails to trust. That decision can be guesswork or it can be guided by IT.