BEC PROTECTION

Business Email Compromise (BEC) Protection

Stop advanced BEC attacks with campaign-level insight into how attackers impersonate people, suppliers, and trusted domains. 

Business professional working on a laptop to help protect against email compromise

Multi-Vector Approach

Protect the trusted relationships BEC attacks exploit

Business email compromise protection helps stop fraud that impersonates executives, suppliers, and other trusted senders. Effective protection combines behavioral threat detection, email authentication, supplier-risk visibility, user resilience, and automated response.

Detect intent

Analyze message intent for deception, behavioral anomalies, relationship patterns, authentication results, and business context.

Reduce supplier risk

Identify risky supplier relationships, compromised third-party accounts, and lookalike domains used in invoice fraud attacks.

Protect trusted domains

Use email authentication and domain monitoring to prevent spoofing and identify lookalike domains used for impersonation.

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Human-Targeted Threats

BEC turns trust into a financial risk

Business email compromise scams target people who handle payments, invoices, supplier communications, and other sensitive requests. Because these attacks often contain no malicious payload, effective detection requires an understanding of the identity, behavior, relationships, and intent behind a message.

$2.8 B
in reported BEC losses in a single year (IC3, 2025)
$30 M+
in losses from BEC scams involving AI (IC3, 2025)

Advanced Email Security

Stop BEC attacks before they reach your people

Detect attacks that use impersonation and social engineering instead of malicious payloads. Proofpoint Core Email Protection uses multi-model AI to expose BEC attacks by analyzing sender behavior, message content, sender and recipient relationships, reputation, and unusual activity.

Behavioral BEC Detection

Analyze behavioral patterns and anomalies to identify deceptive messages in real time.

Message and Intent Analysis

Understand message content and language alongside other signals to identify signs of BEC.

Relationship Analysis

Evaluate sender and recipient relationships to detect unusual or suspicious communications.

Supplier Fraud Detection

Detect tactics associated with invoice fraud, including compromised third-party senders.

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Fraud Protection

Protect domains and trusted sender identities

Discover legitimate senders, manage SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and identify lookalike domains used for impersonation and email fraud. Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense helps prevent attackers from abusing the domains and identities your organization relies on.

Sender Discovery and Authentication 

Identify authorized senders and validate SPF, DKIM, and DMARC across your email ecosystem. 

Safe DMARC Enforcement

Move toward a DMARC reject policy with validation that helps prevent disruption to legitimate email.

Lookalike Domain Detection

Monitor for domains that mimic your brand and may be used for BEC, phishing, and impersonation.

Supplier Risk Visibility

Assess supplier domains, authentication posture, email activity, and threat signals to identify risky relationships. 

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Targeted User Training

Help your people recognize and respond to BEC

Train your users to spot BEC attacks, make safer decisions, and report suspicious messages before fraud succeeds. Proofpoint ZenGuide security awareness training delivers targeted education based on the real threats people face, with streamlined reporting and automation to accelerate response.

Risk-Based BEC Training

Deliver targeted education based on users’ risk, behavior, roles, and the threats they face.

Threat-Informed Simulations

Use real attacks to create relevant phishing simulations and learning experiences.

One-Click Threat Reporting

Give users a simple way to report suspicious email across desktop and mobile devices. 

Just-in-Time Coaching

Guide users at moments of risk with contextual learning based on real-world behavior. 

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Take an interactive tour 

See how Core Email Protection detects BEC threats, identifies at-risk users, and gives security teams the context to fully understand and investigate attacks. 

Why Proofpoint

Proofpoint vs. DMARC-only approaches

CapabilityDMARC-only approachProofpoint BEC Protection 
BEC detection Helps prevent domain spoofing, but not other forms of BEC impersonation  Analyzes behavior, message content, relationships, and other signals to detect BEC 
Domain protection Protects authenticated domains from unauthorized use  Combines email authentication with lookalike-domain monitoring 
Supplier fraud protection Does not address compromised accounts or lookalike supplier domains  Identifies supplier impersonation, compromised accounts, and risky supplier domains 
Account compromise protection Does not protect against attacks from legitimate compromised accounts  Detects suspicious activity associated with compromised email accounts 
User resilience and response Requires separate tools for user resilience and threat response  Connects BEC protection with education, reporting, investigation, and remediation 

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Protect people, trusted domains, suppliers, and email accounts from today's evasive BEC attacks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Business email compromise (BEC) is an email scam that uses impersonation and other social engineering tactics to deceive people. Attackers may pose as executives, suppliers, or other trusted senders to create a sense of urgency and trick users into sending money, sharing sensitive information, or taking another risky action. Unlike many phishing attacks, BEC does not require a malicious link or attachment. 

Organizations can prevent BEC by combining behavioral threat detection, email authentication, account protection, supplier-risk visibility, and security awareness training. These controls help detect spoofed email, impersonation, compromised accounts, and other social engineering techniques while helping people recognize and report suspicious requests. 

No. DMARC helps prevent attackers from spoofing trusted domains, but BEC can also use lookalike domains, compromised email accounts, and supplier impersonation. Effective BEC protection combines email authentication with behavioral detection, domain monitoring, account protection, and user resilience. 

AI can detect BEC by analyzing signals that may reveal deception, including sender behavior, message content, communication patterns, relationships, and unusual activity. This helps identify email scams that may contain no known malware, malicious link, or other traditional threat indicator. 

BEC uses impersonation or other social engineering tactics to make a fraudulent request appear legitimate. Email account compromise occurs when an attacker gains control of a real email account and uses that trusted identity to carry out an attack. Organizations need protection against both forms of identity abuse.