Countries most targeted by BEC scams 2019

This statistic ranks the countries with the most number of companies affected by business email compromise (BEC) in 2019. During the measured period the United States were ranked first on the list, accounting for 37.4 percent of detected BEC scams worldwide.

Countries most targeted by business email compromise (BEC) scams in 2019

Characteristic	Percentage of companies
United States	37.4%
Australia	23.6%
United Kingdom	10.2%
New Zealand	4.3%
Canada	3.3%
Others	21.2%

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Release date

February 2020

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2019

Special properties

Trend Micro Smart Protection Network infrastructure; wider industry metrics may vary

Supplementary notes

BEC = Business Email Compromise (BEC) also known as “CEO Fraud”.
BEC is defined as a sophisticated scam targeting businesses working with foreign suppliers and/or businesses that regularly perform wire transfer payments. The scam is carried out by compromising legitimate business e-mail accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds.
Data refers to the number of BEC attempts seen, which does not indicate whether the attacks were successful.

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